


Almost Something

by bodysnatch3r



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: "canon" was never an option, F/M, Illnesses, M/M, Multi, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-06 07:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 41,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bodysnatch3r/pseuds/bodysnatch3r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's wrong with Tony, and nobody can really put their finger on what it is.<br/>He's started acting more recklessly: his self-destructive ways have come creeping back, stronger and more poisonous than ever, and his near-brushes with death have become all too frequent.<br/>Until, one evening, he collapses: the palladium that powers his arc reactor has started infecting his bloodstream.<br/>And, suddenly, Steve starts realizing that he might be losing something more than just a best friend.</p><h3>This fic is now abandoned.</h3>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bitter Mouth

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically an AU in which the whole "new element blah blah blah" story arc never happened.  
> Ever.  
> But The Avengers did. BEFORE the arc went crazy.  
> Because fuck you, canon logic, we love angst more.  
> That's why.

Captain Steve Rogers curses between his teeth as he is propelled against a particularly hard brick wall by the explosion that has just rocked Washington DC to its core.

He feels something twist in the wrong direction somewhere in his back but pushes it aside, he'll get to it later, fix it all up. For now, he wipes the blood from his mouth and grabs his shield, cracks his neck. He's on his feet again and his mind goes blank. He is annulling himself in the battle and it feels good, it manages to make him forget all useless preoccupations.

"You're getting slow, Cap."

Steve smiles through fatigue as Tony's voice reaches him through the earpiece. 

There's a flash of gold and red: Stark flies into the now disrupted building.

"Careful not to blow your brains out, Stark."

"I got this."

Steve doesn't notice how out of breath he sounds (exhausted, broken, tired. Distant, even.). Or maybe he does, but he just ignores it.

Useless preoccupation, after all. 

In battle, it isn't part of the equation. 

In battle, all that matters is saving others.

And, possibly, making it out alive.

Steve's mind doesn't register the way Tony seems to react to things happening around him (Nat calling his name, dodging bullets, firing against enemies) a second too late. 

These things, the scary things, the things that make him cringe (that makes them all cringe), are for later. For when he can lie in bed and worry like the team leader he is, and think about every little thing that, in the past few months, has seemed to go horribly wrong.

From Tony lying face down in a pool of his own vomit to Tony _yelling_ at Pepper, more aggressive than anyone had ever seen him.

Tony not saying a word for days and Tony partying until he can't think anymore, eyes gleaming with fabricated happiness and an icy cold armor of control.

Tony, Tony, _Anthony_.

Anthony Stark, master of control and pathos and "everything's all right, I got this".

Tony Stark, who's started drinking himself into a stupor again every night (he knows it's an "again" because both Pepper and Natasha have told him of his old self destructive ways, the alcohol, the frivolous sex. The _drugs_ , even, and hearing this didn't come as a surprise to Steve).

But slip Tony into his Iron Man suit, and he becomes another. He always has. He's still reckless, he's still arrogant, still full of himself. But there's something different.

 _Protection_. Tony Stark feels protected in the middle of all of that technology and metal. He is safe and where he has to be.

Steve's mind doesn't register how there's a sudden, intense, beam of light that hits Tony square in the chest because Tony  _didn't move out of its way_ , he sat there and waited for a second that felt like a lifetime. 

He's hit right in the chest, and it takes Steve's screaming, hysterical mind (beyond belief but he still hasn't realized it, it's moving a fraction of an instant too slow against the backdrop of how fast his best friend's been hit) far too much time to realize what has just happened.   


It's Tony's turn to fly backwards. He hits the ground and skits for a few feet, and he isn't moving.  


_He isn't moving_ and everything's happened too fast for anybody to really realize it.  


Steve's mouth tastes bitter. 

*

The flight back to the Helicarrier is quiet. Tony has come through, but his eyes are milky and distant and he hasn't spoken to anyone, not even Steve. 

He moves slowly. And he's in pain: sharp jabs are clearly running down his back, biting into his neck, clawing at his shoulders. 

He hisses as he stands up, but refuses an arm to lean on.

Steve glares at him, and blames him for having nearly gotten killed, again, for the millionth time. Something black and scary tells him Tony _wanted_  to get hit.

He prays he isn't right.

*

It's three days later, back at the Tower, that Steve explodes. He can't hold it in, and it's been gnawing at his brain, viciously.

"We need to talk."

Tony's curled up in a chair, staring at nowhere in particular.

"Stark!" Steve barks.

Silence.

" _Stark_."

Rogers knows he's being ignored. This makes him even more irritated.

" _Tony_ -"

"What? _What do you want to talk about_?"

Stark stands up abruptly and stands in front of Rogers. Moving so quickly makes him flinch, but his eyes are deep and burning nonetheless.

"Washington, by any chance?" he hisses.

"That, and other things."

" _Nothing_  happened, Captain."

"You nearly die-"

" _It's our goddamn job_."

"I'm not going to stand around watching you _kill yourself for sport_."

"I never asked for your approval to do _anything_ , _Steve_."

He hisses his name with such hate and resentment, and it's that that makes Steve snap and ram him against a wall. He's stronger than Tony, and they both know he could break his neck like a twig.

"There's _nothing_  wrong with me."

"A man doesn't push himself so low unless he _wants to die_."

"I'm _Tony Stark._ Tony Stark has _habits_. It's part of the game."

"And it's always _the game_ that matters, isn't it, Mister Stark?"

"Get your hands off of me."

"Or _what_?"

He clutches harder. Tony shuts his eyes, swallows. Suddenly, he looks tired. Exhausted. An old, lonely, sick man.

"Or nothing. Absolutely nothing. Let me go, Steve." he croaks.

The Captain hesitates, but, after a few minutes, complies. Stark collapses on the floor: his breathing's more ragged than ever.

Steve offers a hand to help him up but he refuses, drags himself to his feet on his own. He flinches and moans.

Steve feels his pain as if it were his own.

"You're sick, Tony."

"No."

"Go see a doctor."

"I'm _fine_ , Steve."

"Anthony-"

"I'm fine."

Tony Stark grabs the bottle he was drinking from, takes a sip, walks out (stumbles) and switches the lights off.

Steve stands for a few minutes on his own, chest still heaving. Darkness envelopes him.

His mouth tastes bitter.


	2. To Shatter

"Do you think he does it on purpose?"

"Does _what_ , Clint?"

"Get hit. Get almost killed."

Barton sits across from Romanov. She's fanning through some files and doesn't even look up when he answers her. But her brow is furrowed, her lips are tight.

"He gets his kicks out of it."

"I _know_ what Stark is like, Nat."

Clint's right: this is Tony set on mindless self destruction.

The only possible outcome is alcohol poisoning, pill overdose, or both, because Stark is hell-bent on watching himself waste away. 

He is determined to witness his body caving in due to exhaustion. He  _wants_  to see himself implode.

The only problem is that nobody knows why. 

Not even Pepper.

The spy still keeps her gaze low, seemingly uninterested. 

Clint can read her body language so well he knows she's a far cry from "not interested" right now. She's worried and troubled. Nervous, more than she usually is.

"I've never seen him this bad." she says after a while.

And it's a tiny, quiet whisper. 

This is scared Natasha.

This is I've-just-let-my-guard-down Natasha. 

"Not even when I was under cover."

This is helpless Natasha.

The archer pours himself a glass of water. The jug being placed back onto the table rings through the unnaturally quiet room and through their skulls, unnerving.

He doesn't drink it, though. Pouring it just gave him, for a few seconds, something to do: he's already regretting jumping into this conversation. Uneasiness and emotions are something he isn't accustomed to.

Tension slowly creeps up their shoulders and up their necks. It whispers in their ear.

"You know, maybe he's just depressed."

"I don't real-"

" _Excellent_ analysis, Hawk."

They jump in their seats: neither of them heard Tony come in.

He's standing behind Natasha, wrapped in a bathrobe and what looks like nothing else. Eyes darting, sunken, exhausted.

He's drunk. Confused.

Out of it.

_Pathetic_ , to say the least.

Natasha feels sadness seeing this. Clint is bewildered, mildy disgusted: Tony Stark is so intoxicated he can barely stand up.

Tony Stark is numbing physical pain, and nobody knows this.

Tony Stark is a sad, sad man.

Tony Stark is lonely, like he's always been. 

"I've gone to shrinks, you know. Excellent ones. The best ones in town, paid them every little thing they asked for. Every Goddamn penny. And it all came down to daddy issues. To my infantile fear of responsibilities. And you know what I did-"

He leans forward and nearly falls. 

The caricature of a drunk, and one they've seen once too many times. Tony Stark is larger than life even when he is literally unable to function.

"You're drunk." Clint says flatly.

"That is, yet again, a _very_ , _very_  intelligent observation, Mister Barton-"

"Tony, _you're drunk_."

" _So_ ?"

Stark shrugs, attempts one of his arrogant smiles. He realizes his lips are numb. So is most of his face.

He wonders wether it's just the alcohol, or his body breaking down.

He's had problems swallowing for a week now.

"So we  _refuse_ to have to put up with any of this anymore."

Stark flips around: Steve has just walked in.

This time he tries to will his mouth to move and it's painful: the spiteful grin turns into a grimace.

"Care to join our little psychoanalysis party, Freedom Fries? Freud over here was just explaining to me about this soul crushing depression that has apparently taken over my psyche."

Tony ends his statement attempting to feign a look of surprise. He can't do it: talking is already sucking away most of his energies.

His hands are shaking, but he can still keep the tremors under control. For now.

His head feels heavy, nose and ears full of cotton.

Steve doesn't reply. He just sighs, shakes his head and outstretches his hand.

Tony realizes something is worse than usual: he feels sicker than ever. The alcohol has done nothing to numb his body.

This is beyond his control.

Maybe his body _is_  finally breaking down. Maybe his system's given up, decided to abandon ship before it sinks completely.

Maybe he'll slip into a coma before actually dying. Maybe he'll just crumble to the floor, mouth foaming, already brittle body rocked by convulsions.

He figures it was bound to happen, sooner or later.

"Give me the bottle, Tony."

Stark breathes and every fiber in his body screams. 

"And  _here_  he is, the amazing Captain. Always ready to  _save the Goddamn, fucking day_ ."

He wonders how his brain still manages to be so witty, because everything suddenly feels miles away from him. He is observing the world from a glass tank and it is moving so slow he feels seasick.

"I'm not in the mood for arguing."  


This is a conversation he and Tony have had many, many times over the course of the last few months. 

And each and every time it's been a repetitive, silly ordeal, exhausting to say the least. 

A few times, Rogers has had to punch Tony. 

Most of the times though, Tony would just storm out, slam a door or two on the way.  They'd find him curled up on the floor a few hours later, shaking incontrollably. 

"Give me the bottle, Stark."

Tony takes a step backwards despite the pain.

"I don't _need_  to be saved."

Steve clenches his jaw.

"There is nothing wro-"

"We know. Now give me the bottle."

Steve glares at Tony and Tony glares back, or attempts to. And he's sweaty, breathing funny, swallowing as if he's being choked.

Beady, glassy, pained eyes.

Rogers is scared by what he sees, Tony so deeply incased in pain he doesn't even look _human_  anymore, let alone healthy.

There's something horribly wrong finally surfacing and some part of Steve wishes to kick it back to where it came from, choke and break the neck of whatever is eating his best friend alive.

Tony feels his knees starting to give out and his heartbeat exploding inside his ears. His mind stops to dissect what's happening to his body: this is definitely the long awaited crisis.

It suddenly hits him: he's probably about to die.

He's. Probably. About. To. Die.

" _Tony_?"

Natasha is the first to notice something is seriously wrong. She sprints out of her chair (it topples to the floor), clenches her fists because it's her natural reaction to fear.

But she _doesn't know what to do_.

And Tony moans because he knows he can no longer speak. It's a low, scared, panic stricken sound that explodes from the bottom of his throat into his nose, into the mouth, past blue and purple lips.

His saliva tastes bitter and salty as he feels the bottle slip out of his hands and his knees finally hitting the ground.

Someone's yelling his name, and the Captain's horrified face is the last thing he sees.

He slips into unconciousness, and his last thought is a thought he never imagined he'd have if he were maybe dying.

_Not now, Anthony. Can't you see? Your father's a very busy man. Now go away, I need to work._


	3. Big Bad Monsters

The air feels - tastes, almost - stale around him.

He hasn't slept a wink (none of them have) and everything feels _blank_. Empty.

There's shock and there's fear, just a little relief (but he couldn't say _why_  there's relief, not completely. Maybe he's just happy that doctors might be able to tell them what's gone so wrong).

Mostly, he just feels empty.

He leans back against one of the hospital's windows (he's not sure which window it is, not even sure what wing he's in, he's been roaming around aimlessly for the past hour or so) and sighs. 

Steve runs a hand through his hair: it's the first time ever since Loki's attack on New York that he's been faced with the very, very, _very_  real risk of losing Tony.

His best friend is in pain.

His best friend might be dying.

The well-lit, aseptic hospital corridors suddenly feel tight, choking. Oppressive.

Steve hates them.

And he hates himself, for not noticing earlier that something was wrong.

For noticing too late, when things had already gotten too bad, but brushing it off as Tony being Tony.

For not forcing Stark to go to a doctor as soon as it all got too big for any of them to handle.

He feels he's failed as a team leader. 

Most importantly, he knows he's failed as a best friend.

And he hates Tony for not saying anything for so long.

He realizes just now that he's been staring at a childish crayon drawing: it's been hung up with tape on the door across from him. Some little bald cancer patient probably drew it.

It doesn't phase him, at first. But then his brain clicks.

The drawing is of Iron Man. 

Steve's mouth goes dry.

He wonders if the kid's still alive. 

Suddenly, the thought of someone as helpless as a child dying seems unbearable. Unjust.

He thinks of all the things that kid could've done. Or thought of. Or drawn. He thinks of the miriad of lives that possibly dead child never had. 

A child dying and his best friend dying. 

Rogers is alone in this world, trapped in hospital white and in this pain so big he doesn't even know if it's real.

Too much,  _too much_  all at once.   


Steve inhales deeply.   


A _world without Tony_. Even the thought sounds scary. He tells himself it's ridiculous: Tony Stark has pulled through much worse.  


But Tony Stark has never collapsed, mouth foaming. Tony Stark has never seemed so utterly in pain.  


Steve can feel his throat close up and his mouth taste bitter again. He buries his face in his hands, presses his palms against his eyes until he sees red inside his mind. 

There's pressure on his chest and on his neck: he wants everything to stop. A world without Tony is a world he knows is horribly empty.  


"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"  


His head snaps up, he's startled by this voice that seems to come to him from a dream. 

A woman is looking at him, eyes full of worry. A little bald boy is holding her hand and a cupcake in the other. He's looking up at him, too, eyes wide.

He blinks and shakes his head.

"Yeah. I'm--I'm fine. Thanks."

The woman smiles at him. 

"It's hard, I know." she says quietly.

Steve swallows, at loss.

"Is your son sick, too? If you don't mind my asking."

She's young but there's bags under her eyes, thin creases of worry around her mouth. She looks exhausted to say the least. 

Rogers shakes his head.

"My best friend."

Saying it is much more painful than he expected.

"I'm sorry."

"It's OK."

It isn't, and both the young mother and Rogers know it never is. Maybe never will be.

He is too fragile to handle others right now. Too tiny and scared. He looks at the mother, then at the child. 

They are both soldiers, and they are both fighting on the front line. They cry, and they scream, and they hurt.

But they are still here, braver than anyone.

He wonders if, worse come to worst, he will be able to do the same.

"Did--did you draw that?"

He grins at the sick kid as best as he can and points to the drawing on the door.

The tiny boy hides behind his mother's leg and nods shily.

"It's very pretty."

"The man on the news down at the cafeteria says he's sick, just like me."

Steve is taken aback, at first ( _how could they know already_?), but then he thinks that, yes, of course the kid (and FOX News, and CNN, and the BBC, and every single Goddamn news network in the world) knows Tony's sick.

He's _Iron Man_ , for Chrissake. 

Most importantly, he's the king and ruler of Stark Industries: everybody would be much more surprised if it _wasn't_  on the news.

Steve looks at the drawing and smiles. Tries to. 

He's cut short by looming tears and the hole in his chest growing to unbearable size.

"What's your name, kiddo?"

The boy clutches his mother's hand even tighter. His paper thin skin is almost transparent under the neon lights.

"Don't be shy, darling. Tell the nice man what your name is."

"Robby." he mumbles.

"All right, Robby. Come over here."

Steve crouches down and the boy tentatively walks towards him.

Rogers looks him straight in the eye, placing a hand on each shoulder.

_God, he's so thin_.

"You know who Iron Man's best friend is, right?"

Tiny Robby lights up and smiles.

"Everybody knows that! It's Captain America!"

Steve tires to swallow. He can't.

"Do _you_  have a best friend, Robby?"

"Yessir! His name's John. When we play, I'm Iron Man, and he's Captain America!"

Rogers wants to scream because Tony is everywhere, always, forever. 

And he's so sick with worry he wants to burn everything around him.

But, instead, he smiles wide. And feels a little better.

"And do you beat up the bad guys?"

"Each and every one... But Mommy says there's a really big bad guy inside of me."

Steve points a finger at the kid.

"Well, Iron Man is beating up a pretty tough bad guy right now, too, and I'm pretty sure his friend Captain America would love it if he knew that you're also  beating up bad guys, Robby! So can you promise you'll beat up each and every bad guy out there?"

"Even the bad guy inside of me?"

" _Espetially_  the bad guy inside of you."  


The kid looks hesitant, for a second. Steve arches an eyebrow.

"Promise promise?"

" _Double_ promise, mister!"

"Good boy. Now is it just me or is it way past your bed time, young man?"

Robby looks down at his toes.

"I wanted a cupcake, mister. And I hardly ever have cupcakes, so Mommy said it was OK!"

"Well, if your mom said it was OK, then I really can't say anything, can I?"

He looks up at the mother. She smiles back at him, gratitude irradiates from every fiber of her being.  


Steve stands up.  


Robby runs into his room. The mother follows, but, before closing the door, she looks back at Steve. She sighs, and for a second shows the world how fragile she really is.

"Thank you, mister-"

"Call me Steve."

"Steve. Thank you."

Rogers shrugs. 

"Just doing my job, ma'am."

There are a few moments of awkward silence.

"Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight to you too."

Robby pokes his head out just as Steve's about to walk towards the nearest hospital map: intensive care shouldn't be too far.

"Sir! Mister!"

Steve flips around. 

"Yes, partner?"

"If I manage to beat the monster inside of me, will Iron Man beat it too?"

Steve opens his mouth: his mind is suddenly set on full speed. He can't think, for a second.

But he forces the words out: they sound jagged and strained and painful as he says them, but knows the kid can't tell the difference.

"I'm sure he will, Robby. I'm _positive_ he will."

He's telling that to himself, too. 

He needs the hope.

Once in the elevator (IC is three floors lower than the pediatric ward) he lets himself sink against the shiny metal walls, he lets his knees give out.

Steve Rogers presses a hand against his mouth as sobs start rattling his every fiber. 

This time, the tears come.


	4. Demon Fighting

The walk back to the hospital room takes an eternity and something more.

Steve isn't ready for this - he wasn't ready the second Tony crumbled to the ground, he wasn't ready when they took him to the hospital, he wasn't ready as he roamed the corridors, waiting, and he sure as heck isn't ready now, when he's about to look at Tony strapped to an oxygen mask, Tony full of tubes, Tony who might be dying.

Because, really, it all boils down to this: to the "maybes" and the "mights", and to just _not being ready_  for something that has happened hidden behind closed doors, bathroom stalls, wrapped quietly in nighttime fevers and alcohol bottles. Something that has exploded suddenly and burned them all to ash.

He just met a dying child and gave him and his mother the strength to get through the night, but he feels so tired he doesn't even know if he can make it down a corridor that reeks so much of death and broken lives he wants to lean over and gag.

A tall, thin figure stands at the very end, red hair pushed back in a ponytail. She's staring at the glass windowpane that makes up one of the walls of Tony's room.

She's stiff, she's quiet, she's trying to keep the trembling in check.

Pepper Potts wants to scream, but knows very well it would solve nothing. 

Pepper Potts secretly hopes that if she closes her eyes everything will go away.

Pepper Potts feels useless and stupid. 

Steve is almost hesitant to walk up to her: everybody else has already left, gone back to the Tower or even their own homes. He fears he might be intruding, or maybe he just doesn't want to deal with anybody else's pain piling up on his already heavy load. 

It's just them watching over Tony.

Pepper stands, lips tight, staring at the man she's fallen in love with's messy and bloody dance with death. Tubes running in and out of his body, his morbid love letter to a life he always despised and loved to play with. 

Tony Stark has tipped his hat and clicked his heels to the Grim Reaper once too many, and they fear that this time he's gone too far down the rabbit hole to be able to climb out.

_Pepper loves Tony_ , even though he drives her so far up the wall sometimes she just wants to walk out on him, leave him rotting in his own alcohol induced stupor, wave a pearly white handkerchief as he risks his life supposedly attempting to save the world. Or feed his ego.

But losing him would mean losing herself, and she cannot possibly afford such pain.

Steve comes up next to her: she catches a glimpse of his reflection in the glass. They both look like ghosts: she certainly feels like one, hollow and weak.

"I thought you'd gone home."

"I'm not leaving the bastard alone, Pepper."

She smiles.

"You're a good friend."

"I'm not." Steve sighs, and he lets his gaze wander around the hospital room as guilt boils in the back of his skull.  

Stiff, white, perfect.

And he looks at _Tony_ , _really_ looks at him. And he sees how thin he's become, how much he's wasted away right under their eyes and it's insane, he is simply completely utterly unable to understand it nor accept it: _Tony never told anyone_.

He was falling apart and he never told anyone.

Which is exactly what is to be expected from Tony Stark, but it still tastes something like betrayal.

"He's an idiot."

"Don't-"

"He's an idiot, Pepper. An arrogant, self-centered idiot."

" _Steve_."

"Don't say I'm not right. He could've asked anyone, _told_  anyone and yet here we are, worrying ourselves sick while he's sleeping the pain away."

She shrugs.

"Tony is Tony."

"It's _unfair_."

It's all a nightmare. 

"Life sometimes is."

"How can you just-just _look at him_  without wanting to tear everything to pieces?"

Steve feels out of control and he realizes that's where some of this pain that has suddenly taken hold of his every move is coming from: he cannot control this situation and it is something he isn't used to. 

Pepper gazes upon Tony, swimming in morphine-induced sleep. 

"I do, Steve. Believe me, I do."

She suddenly seems to shrink a million sizes as she sighs.

"Sometimes I think I'll never get used to it."

"The hospital runs?"

"No. Being so helplessly in love with him."

Steve runs a hand through his hair when she says this. There's sudden screaming in his mind, and it means a million things.

He just doesn't know it yet.

*

He can't sleep, or doesn't want to sleep, and he doesn't even know what time it is.

Black was melting into light blue the last time he glanced out of a window, and that feels like forever ago.

He's been locked in a gym ever since Pepper forced him to leave the hospital insisting that she was going to be all right, that he needed sleep (she ignored his claims that they _both_  needed sleep so they could've both stayed awake just as well), that Tony wasn't going anywhere, that she would've called the minute anything would've changed. 

Steve figures she just needed some time alone with Tony.

Maybe she just needed to cry.

He thinks of how ridiculous it is for adults to be so scared of tears, both theirs and those of other's.

His right fist collides with the punching bag.

He thinks of himself, completely at loss, curled up in an elevator crying like a baby and praying nobody would come in.

His left fist collides with the punching bag.

He thinks of everything that's happened so fast. He knows he needs to stop and collect his thoughts, but stopping would mean tripping, and tripping means never being able to get up.

His right fist collides with the punching bag. His left fist collides with the punching bag.

And again. And again.

And again.  


He feels his bones rattles as his fists fly, he feels his muscles burn, shoulders ache.  


Sweat dripping, chest heaving. He is fighting his demons.  


Steve is losing.

He is losing even before the real fight has started and it makes him want to scream and turn back time, notice earlier, grasp fate by the throat and choke it.

Because if Tony doesn't make it through, one person too many will lose their sanity.


	5. A Waiting Game

Steve Rogers opens his eyes to a morning he does not care about and to a breakfast he will not eat.

He feels perfectly empty. 

It's been two weeks.

Tony isn't dead, but _it's been two weeks_ , and it has been hell.

You drag yourself to a hospital each and every morning and you sit in a chair and you wait and you wait and you _wait_ , his life's become a waiting game, nothing more and nothing less.

He sits and he watches him sleep and lets his exhausted mind run in circles, blaming everything and everyone and nothing (but, most importantly, _himself_ ) all at once, wondering and analyzing and over-analyzing and worrying himself out of his skull until there's a light tap on his shoulder and Pepper smiles at him.

Most of the time it's just him and Potts, and they've grown accustomed to the solitary and quiet company of each other. They take turns: she goes and gets a sandwich at the cafeteria, he buys a can of soda and occasionally runs into Robby and his mom. The woman will ask how his friend's doing and he'll answer "Still sleeping.", feeling the knot inside his throat grow dangerously tight.

Occasionally, Natasha or Clint or Thor or Bruce will stop by (sometimes even Maria) but it's always strained and quick visits. 

It' an alienating thing, to see Tony so  _fragile_  and Steve doesn't blame them for wanting to stay away. 

He wishes he could stay away, too, at least for a day, instead of being horribly compelled to crawl into a badly lit hospital room every morning, listen to the whizz of machines and wonder if he'll ever hear his best friend's laugh again.

Sometime after the sun sets he's usually forced to leave by either the doctors, or Pepper (or both) and he locks himself in a gym throwing punches until he can't stand up anymore and his exhausted brain tells his more than shattered body that it's time to get some rest, and Steve then proceeds to crawl into his bed and force his mind to quiet down (most of the times, he fails, and there's nightmares of wartime and Tony not making it through), only to start it all over again the following morning. 

There's nearly no food, hardly any rest, and definitely not enough water going into his body but he figures (thinks, wonders, hopes) that destroying himself physically will also destroy his feelings, and feelings are definitely something he has little to no use of right now.

He is becoming happily unhinged and doesn't care one bit.

Steve stares at Tony who hasn't moved in two weeks and wonders if he can hear him.

He wonders if he's aware of his surroundings, aware of people coming and going, of doctors saying they don't know what's exactly wrong _just yet_  and that it will take time (Steve has a quiet paranoid thought he's kept all to himself that doctors not actually telling him anything is just another one of Tony's stupid tricks), if he's aware of journalists, of the ever-present worry. 

He wonders if, when he'll wake up (and he _will_  because he _has to_ ), Tony'll just look at them all, thin and sleep deprived, and laugh his goddamn ass off. 

*

It's been three weeks and a day.

More than once has Steve not moved from his bed and has felt guilty for doing so, and today is one of those days in which all he wants is to become the tiny, small, invisible, thin Steve from before the experiment, the innocent Steve who didn't know how to dance, the Steve who didn't shut his eyes and see twisted images of Tony Stark's body wasting away.

Because Tony has, in some ways, become a very quiet obsession that seems to fill his every fiber and every thought of those around him. It is an obsession he doesn't want to understand the nature of just yet (he fears it is something he considers far too twisted and sick) and it is an obsession that is sucking the energy out of his mind at such a pace he doesn't think he can handle it any longer.

It's an obsession that tastes of fear grown to unbearable size, of betrayal, of abandonment, of death.

It tastes of _heartbreak_ , and Steve feels as if he is mourning a man who has not died yet but is dangerously close to doing so, and he is not ready. He never will be.

Tony Stark is a heartbeat from oblivion, and he's already become a ghost: people talk of him in hushed whispers and lowered gazes. He is an uncomfortable presence always lingering.

There is sunlight creeping in through halfway shut blinds: Steve realizes he was drunk the night before (or told himself he was, and once again he hates this body that simply _doesn't break_ ) and the throbbing in his head is nothing but the aftermath.

His phone rings, suddenly. And Rogers is paralyzed by sudden, forceful pain.

_Something has happened_  and his stomach suddenly feels heavy, dread climbs up its walls: it fills his mouth and nostrils. He wants to move but on the other hand doesn't, and there's pain latched with every waiting breath.

"Hello?"

He feels like choking and wonders how he got from the bed to the phone in such little time without tripping and falling and crumbling to ash.

"He's woken up."

It's Pepper's voice.

" _He's woken up_."

She says it again and Steve can hear the tears of joy that make her voice crack.

Something stops spinning inside of him all of a sudden and there's white.  


"Pepper- _what_?"

"I--He's _okay_ , Steven, he's-"

There's sudden commotion on the other side and Rogers figures he's either dreaming or has completely lost his wits because good can't possibly happen after _so much bad_ , he's learned that things don't work that way.

"--Steven? Captain?"

Rogers catches himself just in time before he drops the phone and the first real, genuine smile in what has been a lifetime gleams across his face.

He's standing in his underwear in the middle of his living room listening to a voice he thought he'd lost forever.

"Judging from your dumbfounded silence, I'm going to assume you're still there."

He's out of breath and sounds miles away, but what Steve is listening to is, without any doubt, _Tony Stark_.

"You're an idiot, Anthony." he finally wills himself to mutter.

"Pepper's already told me a couple of times."

"Did she punch you?"

"I was expecting _you_ to do that, actually."

Steve lets out a gleeful sigh and runs a hand over his eyes and through his hair because he can't quite believe it just yet and he wants to savor this feeling of disbelief, this amazing irreality that seems to drip in with golden sunlight.

Steve thinks, for a second, that it's all over. That Tony's okay, that he'll be fine, that he's fixed and ready to go.

That he'll have his best friend back in no time.

He's wrong, and horribly so, but there's something in the way he seems to breathe again that tells him that, for the time being, Steve Rogers can make believe everything will be okay.


	6. Chocolate

"That's what I'm telling you, Pepper-- _Ah_. _Ow_. Be gentle with me, doctor."

Steve peers into the hospital room, and Bruce does too (Rogers stopped to pick him up on the way), and they both can't help but grin.

Tony's still sickly thin, and he's still looking terrifyingly ill, but at least he's _awake_  (and sober) and (just because of this tiny, simple thing) all the bad things can be, for the time being, forgotten.

He's been awake for two days now, and nearly ready to go home.

Tony points at the newcomers as a busy looking doctor performs yet another blood test. Pepper stands close, leaning her back against the window.

"Did you bring me flowers? God, I hope it isn't flowers. Or chocolate - and he stuffs a creamy Belgian praline into his mouth while saying so - because Miss Romanov and her pet hawk have already filled me up with those. Everybody has, actually. For some reason, it's all about the chocolate."

He nods towards a bedside table and a windowsill literally bursting with both pricey and brightly colored flora and excessively sweet food.

"So, is it chocolate?"

"It _isn't_ chocolate, you idiot." Steve says, holding up a copy of the latest "Wired" issue (featuring Tony's face in glossy HQ front-cover pictures - him and Bruce figured Stark needs a little ego feeding) and a bottle of soda.

" _Soda_?"

Bruce shrugs.

"I _told him_ you wouldn't like it."

"Is this some kind of intervention I wasn't warned about?"

Tony arches an eyebrow and smirks. The doctor quietly makes him open his mouth.

"Say 'aaah'."

" _Aaaah_."

It's good to have Tony back.

"No, it's to avoid you getting alcohol poisoning again."

Tony playfully rolls his eyes and his mind laughs at Steve, always so naive and kind.

He wishes it were that simple, and he wishes he didn't have to lie.

He wonders if it isn't _all_  not wanting help, not wanting others to know he's weak, not wanting to appear as fragile as he actually is.

Deep down he's scared they'll get hurt. He's scared they'll crumble, they'll falter. He's scared he'll wreck their lives even more than he already has.

And it's funny, _Tony Stark is caring._

 __But sometimes it's hard _not to care_ , especially when it has to do with those (the few) he actually loves.

_It's for the best_ , he tells himself, but there's a lot to feel guilty about. 

Tony wishes his body would stop screaming relentlessly: it makes it thousands of times harder to think. He flinches as yet another needle gets pushed inside a vein, and it surprises him that his blood hasn't turned black yet. For a second he thinks how he'll be able to hide it once it actually does, but exhaustion quickly makes it impossible for him to really concentrate on such a complex and difficult idea.

He dreamt, while he was in a coma. He dreamt of a father he knows nothing of, of a mother he wishes he'd known better.

Tony Stark hardly ever dreams. 

Steve puts the magazine next to him on the bed and smiles: Tony can tell he's happy and this tears right through him with the force of a three hundred ton truck.

They all think he's okay or better when in fact he's paying doctors and nurses hundreds of dollars not to tell anyone he's wasting away.

Dying, literally dying, his body's been failing him for months now. Blood rotting, organs soon to follow.

And it all started with his heart.

And he'd laugh at the fact that it's his creation that's killing him if it all weren't so _pathetic_ , because, after all, he really can't escape it: Stark invents death machines, no matter how hard he tries not to.

He'll be out of the hospital in a couple of days and he already knows he'll find a way to nick as much morphine as he can from the place (he's Tony Stark and Tony Stark gets whatever he wants whatever the cost) because it's clear and in plain sight that alcohol is a less efficient (and aspirin sure as heck won't work) and much more detectable pain killer than getting high on opiates.

Maybe heroin will work, too.

He wishes, for the millionth time, to have died in Washington.

*

Steve rams his fists against the punching bag until they ache and throb.

He does it again, and he'll do it throuought the entire night because he was stupid and dumb to think _anything was going to change_. Because things can work for a day or a week or maybe even a month, but then they'll fall apart again.

They always do.

Tony Stark knows no such thing as a "wake up call".

Tony Stark knows no such thing as caring about others.

Tony Stark knows nothing about how it makes others  _feel_  to have to stand perfectly still and witness his disintegration because Tony Stark is _Tony Stark_  and "Tony Stark has habits".

Steve feels stupid and ignorant. This is torture all over again, these are unanswered questions that have started to chew their way through his skull with outstanding energy, he shouldn't be going through this, the weeks spent with Tony unconcious will last him for a lifetime. They are enough and always will be.

The rythm of his fists colliding with leather does nothing to soothe him: it's the fourth punching bag he's broken. And he's not planning on stopping until he crumbles.

He's sick of feeling, sick of what Tony makes him feel.

"Rogers."

He looks up and it's Nick Fury that's staring at him (flashbacks, sudden, to a night that happened a lifetime before, images that lead to fragmented memories of Tony flying up holding a bomb, Tony who he'd just met snickering in his general direction, Tony, Tony, _Tony_  who's built himself a comfy little den in the back of his head and doesn't seem to have any intention to leave), nearly motionless.

Steve wipes the sweat from his forehead.

Suddenly, violently, he misses Peggy, who was warmth, and comfort, and home.

"Sir?"

"Can't sleep?"

"Not when I'm feeling like this."

"We need to talk about Stark."

Steve looks at the floor. He knows this was going to happen.

He doesn't mind it happening, though. He might learn something more.

The nagging in his brain could stop.

Fury sits down on a bench and gestures to the Captain to do the same. Rogers complies, and he's starting to feel a little nervous.

"His recent behaviour has alarmed not only me, but the Council."

"It's alarmed _us_ too, sir."  

Steve smirks, bitter.

"I'm certain it has. But, it has also come to my attention that Stark has kept some extremely important information from you-information regarding his present health condition -  Nick opens the folder he's holding and Steve catches a glimpse of a long and detailed psychological and physical evaluation of Tony - Information, I believe, he had no right to keep secret."

He flips through numerous pages until he finds the right one - by now, Steve's mouth tastes so bitter he's ready to gag.

He's dizzy: once again, too many things are happening too fast. He needs time to grow accustomed to changes (good or bad) but time clearly doesn't care about him.

"Are you familiar with the chemical element known as Palladium, Rogers?"

Steve frowns.

"I'm not a rocket scientist, am I?"

"Palladium is the element contained in Stark's arc reactor: it's what powers his heart."

"So?"

"It's very, _very_ deadly. According to the medical tests we've obtained, even though Tony was doing everyting he could to keep us away from them, it' started infecting his bloodstream."

It doesn't register.

Steve doesn't register what Nick has just said. He listens to it, he understands it, but he doesn't register it.

Because there's a difference between fearing that your best friend might be dying and knowing that he is.

There is an abyssal, eternal, terrifying difference.

Steve outstretches his hand.

"May I see that, sir?"

He grabs it without really looking, stands up,and storms out.

Nick doesn't try to stop him, and he knows perfectly well where he's going.

There's a quiet difference and, many times, it's the thin red line between sadness and insanity.

*

It wasn't a hard task to find him: Tony's giving a fund collection for starved African children at the Pierre Hotel. And Steve knows New York like the back of his hand.

He knows they won't let him in but he might as well try. It's when he's about to engage in an extremely unelegant fistfight with one of the bouncers at the events that a voice he knows far too well (and that sounds so, so, so full of pain) saves him just in time.

"Steve! Steven, my dearest Steve! Let him through - he's a friend."

Tony's smiling as he hands Rogers a flute of champagne but Steve refuses it briskly.

" _We need to talk_."

He's blunt and direct and maybe even a little violent, but his mind is swimming in disbelief and rage. 

Stark awkwardly glances behind his shoulder: he meets Pepper's gaze, quizzical.

There's guests he needs to entertain and checks he needs to receive.

"I'm definitely too busy right now."

"This can't wait."

Something in Steve's voice makes him sound terrifying.

Tony swallows awkwardly and feels his body temperature dropping. 

He needs a refill of painkillers: he can already feel his tongue and mouth on fire.

"All right. I can give you ten minutes."

*

They're in the hotel's public bathroom. Tony locks the door behind them. He can't focus very well: he's seeing double.

"What is it?"

Steve tries to keep calm but it's already proving to be hard.

He rips the page out of Tony's folder and slams it against his chest. Stark looks at it, dumbfounded, and then furrows his brow.

" _Palladium_? What, in God's name, is _Palladium_?"

"How did you get this?"

" _Lethal_."

"How the fuck did you get this?"

"Nevermind how I got this-it's lethal, Tony. Lethal."

"Was it Fury? Has he started spying on my every move again?"

" _When the fuck were you planning on telling me_?"

"Steve--"

"Or were you hoping you'd get killed? Overdose? Drunk? Hit during a mission? Don't you ever stop to _think_ , once in a while?"

"Steven, _please_."

He's lost control.

"But you don't care, do you? You never have and you never _did_  because it doesn't matter if those around you _suffer_ , because you're _Tony Stark_  and TONY STARK SIMPLY DOESN'T _CARE_!"

He grabs Tony by the shirt and shakes him.

"DIDN'T YOU STOP TO THINK ABOUT US? ABOUT PEPPER? ME? THE _TEAM_?"

Tony grabs Steve's wrists and squeezes. He can't do this.

"WHAT DO YOU _WANT_ , STEVE?"

"The _truth_."

"You want the truth?" Tony hisses. "You want the _goddamn truth_?"

"It's about time."

"I'M DYING. I'M DYING, AND IT'S POISONING MY BLOOD, AND IT'S TERMINAL. THERE'S NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED TO KNOW? I'M DYING, STEVE. I'M DYING. _"_

And Tony screaming this makes Steve's brain _click_  because he can see it in his eyes and he can see it in the way he doesn't seem to be able to even walk around anymore and he sees it in every fiber that makes up Stark.

And his mind rebels all of a sudden to the idea of death that is scary and unbeatable and he lets go of Tony abruptly, leaving him on his knees amongst the scattered remnants of his medical files.

Steve runs out of the lights and the party, past Pepper who looks more worried than ever. He can't breathe nor can he think because Tony saying it has made it final and definite and _real_  and he doesn't want to think.

He needs the muscles burning.

Steve Rogers starts running through New York that's wrapped in darkness.

He thinks he loves Tony, and that's the scariest thing of them all.


	7. Leviticus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to laziness and migraine pains, the author has decided that at least for this chapter all months are thirty days long because there is no way the author will ever conjure the energy to stop and figure out when this is taking place although it is probably summer.  
> And everybody agrees with the author.  
> Because the author is actually Nick Fury.  
> Go the fuck to sleep, motherfucker.

Steve slams the door shut behind him, and stands in his living room, chest heaving (he knows he should go back to the Tower sooner or later but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do so ever since  _Tony_   _happened_  because Stark Tower doesn’t feel like  _home_ , not without his best friend).

His throat is on fire.

He’s been running all night.

He can’t get drunk when he’s in pain.

He can’t take drugs.

Can’t take pills.

He can’t hurt himself.

He can’t force himself to  _forget_ , nor can he slip into oblivion. 

So exhausting himself is his only way of ever getting close to emptiness, and he’s been doing that quite a lot recently.

But it's never enough. There's always a tiny shrivel of awareness. There's no nothingness, no sweet bliss.

He cannot be broken.

His spirit is crumbling and his body will not follow, and thus it betrays him.

Steve presses his forehead against the wall in his still dark hallway, squeezes his eyes shut. Sweat makes his body shiver.

He almost feels like laughing at how ridiculous his life has become: here he is, a brink from putting a bullet in his brain all because a billionaire is too arrogant and proud to ask for help.

Because that billionaire is _dying_. 

Suspicions he's had for months now have suddenly become very, very real in the blink of an evening, and this is the breaking point of a situation so full of tension Steve stops for a second to wonder how he hasn't snapped yet.

He could count the days that have passed ever since Tony started partying wildly ( _self medicating_ ) again.

One hundred and fifty.

He could count the days that have passed ever since Tony almost got hit ( _tried to kill himself_ ) during battle for the first time.

Ninety. 

He could count the days that have passed ever since Tony got hit in Washington.

Sixty.

He could count the days that have passed ever since Tony collapsed.

Fifty four.

He could count the days that have passed ever since Tony woke up and said everything was okay ( _started lying to you all over_ ).

Thirty.

He could count the days that have passed ever since Steve realized he was going to lose his best friend

( _the man you're in love with_ )

 _(NO_ )

He slams his fist against the wall. 

Once, twice.

A third time, and it hurts his hand.

There is _difference_  between loving and _being in love_ , and Steve knows it very well. He does, he does, he _does_.

He rips himself away from the wall and pours himself a glass of water in the kitchen, opens the window and feels the bight of air against his skin.

He hopes it will clear his mind, since the running has failed (but the running was more symbolic, he realizes: a metaphor of him trying to _avoid_  the fact that Tony is, in fact, dying).

Tony who's an unwanted obsession and poison burning his every cell, Tony who he admires, who he hates, despises, finds annoying, adores, respects, worships and he's wanted to punch on more occasions than one.

Tony who is slipping away from them all (but from him, especially from him, best friend who was betrayed, kept away from truths he knows would have hurt so much less if spoken immediately).

Tony who smiles, Tony who laughs.

Tony, Tony, Tony.

Tony whose name rolls around his mouth and brain, tastes of doubt and pain.

_Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination._

__Leviticus, 18:22.

Steve tells himself it's only infatuation but knows very well it is much more and definitely beyond that and he _doesn't want it_ , he doesn't want it because it's been drilled in his brain ever since he could basically walk that falling in love with another man is wrong. 

Time and time again, it's been explained to him that now things have changed. And he _understands it_ , and he _respects it_ , but it's an etirely different issue right now because it's happening to _him_.

 _He_ is the one maybe falling in love with the worst man possible, an arrogant bastard with big bad Daddy issues and survivor's guilt. Not to mention a fatal blood poisoning that has no cure.

 _He_  is the one who has to face himself because of this, maybe even accept himself.

 _He_  is the one who has to bear the fact that there's not a reason in this world why Tony should ever want him.

Stark has Pepper.

Stark has any _girl_  he could ask for. All he needs to do is snap his fingers.

The Captain stares at the sky, darkness melting into dawn. 

New York screams against the symphonies of pink and blue and purple that have just started to blossom, it burns and trembles and lives on, and it will live on until the end of time, and then some more beyond that.

He misses Peggy, just like every other day.

He misses her deeply, in ways he never would expect to miss someone he loves, or used to love.

He can't tell anymore.

And this scares Steve, the _sheer confusion_  his life has toppled headfirst into.

He laughs, and hates himself for far too many worthless reasons.


	8. Points Of View

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there!  
> Firstly, I'd like to thank all of you wonderful readers for the views, reviews, subscriptions and kudos - it means the world to me.  
> I just wanted to let you guys know that I'm going in for surgery: this means I won't be able to post as frequently as before due to recovery.  
> Thank you all for the constant support!  
> X.  
> -J

It takes a few moments for Tony to snap out of it. He’s still on his knees in the middle of a marble clad bathroom ten minutes after Rogers has stormed out, betrayal and fear dancing in his eyes.

_Steve knows_.

So does Nick Fury (but this doesn’t come as much as a surprise).

If Fury knows, then  _Natasha_  probably knows, too.

That’s three people too many he can’t pay to forget or keep quiet.

That’s three people too many he can’t handle knowing.

“ _Tony_?”

Pepper’s voice in the distance: heels clicking, getting dangerously close, and, really, Tony doubts he could bear  _her_  knowing, too, so he shakes his mind clear and painfully stands up (he needs to lean against a sink to do so, wincing) and grabs the scattered folder off the floor.

He glances around for a few panicked moments: he can’t stuff it in the trash, someone could find it. Tony really doesn’t feel like having to deal with a maid reading not only every single detail about his terminal condition, but also a quite aptly done analysis of his survivor’s guilt (Yinsen is an ugly ghost in the back of his head that pops up at the worst of times), his decades-long closeted bisexuality and pretty much every other nasty thing floating around in his brain.

It’s not his fault he has “Daddy Issues” plastered all over his face,  _really_.

He also needs to find a way to clean up the glass of champagne he dropped when Steve grabbed him, but for now he needs to lean against something.

His head is swimming and spinning all of a sudden, he’s having a hard time swallowing again.

Tony curses this body that seems to break so easily. He curses himself for  _letting_  it break. And he knows he can’t muster the energy to throw away the paper before Pepper comes in, which she does, and stops to stare at him.

He sighs, and feels utterly defeated.

“What’s going on?”

“I—Nothing. Really.”

“Did you and Steve fight?”

“Depends on your point of view. One could say we had a friendly discussion.”

And it hurts.

She glares at the champagne stained papers he's holding.

"What's that?"

His brain swims in honey-thick pain and searches for a good lie he could feed her.

"Nothing, Pepper. Nothing. Really. S.H.I.E.L.D. crap."

"What's it about?"

"Nothing important."

He knows she knows he's lying and he doesn't care.

She clutches her fists and crosses her arms. Her eyes are narrowed.

" _Do you think I'm stupid, Tony_?"

"Pepper, darling. Please--I could _never_ -"

Pepper looks into the man she loves' eyes and sees much more pain, both physical and emotional, than what he shows. And she thinks of the rich, boastful, arrogant bastards outside drinking champagne and handing over checks who know _nothing_ , nothing at all about the tiny, excruciating tragedy that is happening right this instant.

And that tragedy has a name and a face, and it's a face she fell in love with and a face she still loves but doesn't know if she can handle anymore.

Pepper Potts feels more than lonely. She is alone, in this pain so big it's crushing her, freezing her, making every step and breath last a lifetime.

"They're nothing, at all. Nothing. _Really_."

His voice is tiny, exhausted, scared. 

Tony looks down and suddenly hates his very existence, and he hates his brain and his body and his blood, his rotting, black blood, the lies he's been telling.

He wants to grab Pepper by the shoulders and shake her and scream: "I'm _dying_  and I don't want to but there's nothing I can do about it!", he wants to yell and rip his body apart and fix it and kiss her and leave her forever. He wants for everything to stop and he wants to magically get better and to crawl into bed and never get out. He wants to run on the street and he wants to announce it to everyone, "Tony Stark is dying and there's nothing he can do about it".

But he knows he'll do nothing of the sort. 

He just rubs his eyes, furrows his brow. Tries to swallow - it takes him a few seconds and it's painful, like always. 

His head is starting to hurt again. He wants to go home in Malibu and get so stoned he's forced to not feel himself anymore.

But he can't, and the pain rages on.

Pepper senses all of this.

"Tony, are you all right?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm _fine_." he hisses, much more defensive and aggressive than he'd like.

She pulls back."

"Jesus, Pepper, I'm sorry."

"Very well."

"I didn't mean to-"

"It's OK. I know you didn't."

Pepper looks at him and he stares back. His eyes are glassy, blood stricken.

He's _sick_.

"I'm sor-"

But he doubles over, coughing. It's quite a painful sight.

"Tony. It's _fine_. Do whatever you like. Really. Do it."

She's about to add "I don't care" but she stops just in time because she still does. She's exhausted by this all, but she still cares about him.

"Just remember that I _trust you_. We all do."

"I _know_ , Pepper."

She tries to say "I love you", too.

Pepper discovers that she can't.

"Just-just be quick, Tony. People are waiting."

Pepper smiles weakly,  glances at him once again and hastily walks out of the bathroom. It feels as if she's betraying him.

And maybe she is, just a little.

But caring is still loving, right?

Somehow.

It all depends on your point of view.

*

Tony can't sleep.

He hasn't been sleeping well (nightmares and pain) for what feels like years but, tonight, he hasn't even been able to quiet his brain down.

He turns around in the uncomfortable New York five star hotel bed (he's refused to sleep at the Avengers tower ever since he left the hospital so he and Pepper have moved back to Malibu, and he's not going back there, not even for a night) and looks at Pepper, curled up next to him. She seems peaceful (at least he hopes she is), at bliss. She's far from their fight, far from the tension.

He feels happy for her, amid all the guilt.

It's too warm to sleep, so Tony stands up and opens the balcony doors and steps outside, cool air bites into his sweaty skin. He lights himself a cigarette and tries to ignore the pain.

He can't.

He glances once more at sleeping Pepper, her milky white skin nearly shining in the nighttime lights. He wishes he could shield her from the pain that is yet to come, the disappointment, all of the lies he's going to have to tell. It never seems to stop.

But he can't fix this problem, and this paralyzes him with fear.

He's tried to, of course he's tried, but all he's managed to do is slow the process of deterioration.

He thinks of Steve, and the thought is a casual one picked from the thousands more bubbling in his brain.

Betrayed Steve, enraged Steve, scared of losing him Steve.

Steve who feels as if he's failed. Steve who doesn't know what to do.

Pepper stirs and wakes up, briefly.

"Tony?" she slurs.

He turns around, bedsheets wrapped around his hips. 

"It's okay, Pepper. Go back to sleep."

In the darkness he smiles reassuringly, although there's really not enough light for her to be able to see him.  


Tony sighs, inhales the sweet taste of smoke.  


And thinks of no one else but Steve.

And maybe feeling guilty about lying to your best friend is a little bit like falling in love with him head over heels.

It just depends on your point of view.


	9. Grief

There is something uneasy and scary in the quiet that seems to seep in every corner of their house, and it's a quiet Pepper hates because it's a quiet that forces her to lie awake in bed at night with no other comfort but  _thoughts_  and listening to Tony's pained, shallow breathing.

Quiet that sticks to her skin and brain like the sweat and this horrid, unbearable Malibu summer that is exhausting to say the least, and sucks her of any will to do anything at all.

She has a preposterous amount of things to do: there's lawyers to placate, there's journalists to keep away, interviews to cancel, phonecalls and emails to answer, she needs to hold Tony's hair back as he pukes his hangovers away, she needs to check he isn't OD'ing on each and every kind of pill on the house, she needs to take care that he eats, that he doesn't sleep too little, that he doesn't make an ass of himself at social events, that he doesn't collapse again and, most importantly, that he doesn't  _die_.

Doing these things, especially taking care of Tony, seeps into her bones and turns them into lead. Her back feels heavy. Her head feels heavy.

Her soul feels heavy, the responsibility of watching Anthony waste away and not knowing how to stop it makes it hard to live.

She's sitting on the floor in the middle of their living room, next to the piano, cross-legged. Her head's pounding stronger than usual and she gives herself the luxury of thinking of pouring herself a drink.

But her mind scolds her almost immediately for having such an irresponsible thought.

She can't drink - not now.

She wonders whether she should will herslef to move and see what Tony's doing (he's been locked up in the workshop for a week now, emerging - rarely - only for meals and sleep), and this means having to face yet another stressfull argument, or if she'd much rather sit here, immoble, listening to the world crash and burn around her.

She stands up despite herself, and there's dread in the pit of her stomach.

*

Tony feels something bordering on emptiness churn inside his mind.

This comes with a joyful sigh of defeat as the morphine kicks in and he feels himself dissolving alongside with the pain. His nose is dripping, his hands lay limp, a mere lifeless extention of his arms and wrists, as he leans back. He's sitting in one of his father's 1962 Ferraris and he wonders for a second how long his body will handle his regular injections of morphine before he has to start using something stronger (weed stopped working a lifetime ago).

"Sir?"

"Shut up, JARVIS." he snaps (arrogant and rude) over the loud, all engulfing rock music he's been playing non stop, and doesn't feel guilty.

"Sir, haven't you had enough of that?"

Tony wills his body to think of a witty response, but he can't really feel his feet, let alone his brain. And it feels  _good_ , for once, to be so horribly disconnected from his flesh, his muscle, his bone, his blood, his nerves that seem to be drenched in petrol and set alight with every breath.

There is no pain,  _not an ounce of pain_. 

There's almost relief.

He's not high: the rush comes from the endorphines being released in his bloodstream due to the fact that he isn't hurting, finally, for once.

He wonders (almost absentmindedly) if drinking now could kill him.

Oxycotin, alcohol and morphine. Mix 'em all up, and he could be dead in a minute.

Because there'a a  _difference_ , yet again there's a ridiculous and maddening difference between complete, total relief from pain and taking something ( _anything_ ) knowing that you'll be okay for an hour or two before the beast comes tearing at your flesh again.

And he can't stand that anymore. He can't bear it.

Tony opens his eyes all of a sudden and stares at the ceiling.

He could be dead in an instant: and this sudden poisonous idea scares him and intrigues him.

" _Sir_?"

But JARVIS sounds far too far away now, nothing but a mere nagging in the back of his brain. He runs a hand over his eyes, and waits for sleep to creep up and whisk him away: he's taken enough crap to knock himself out for a couple of hours.

Hopefully.

And Tony smiles. He hasn't worked on a machine (suit or car or whatever) in eons, hasn't done anything useful for anyone in months.

He's sat around patiently waiting for the world to collapse onto him and crush him. Realizing that this wasn't going to happen at his desired speed, he'd decided to destroy himself as fast as possible. 

So in came the booze, the pills, the drugs. The risk taking. The not caring.

But he  _ferociously_ wanted to live.

And he knows he's going to kill himself, no matter what it takes: in his eyes, dying was (and still is) much better than having to face his own body decaying, which leads them all to this precise moment right now, with Tony curled up in an old racing car and massive amounts of morphine pumping through his bloodstream, not a care in this world and far too many thoughts churning inside his brain.

He shuts his eyes, feels his soul evaporate through every pore of his body. He's floating, and sleep kisses his eyelids shut tight.

But he's not completely unconcious: there's a tiny portion of his brain that is still somehow aware of his surroundings, and that portion of nerves that hasn't given in to slumber yet informs his brain that there's someone who's just walked in.

Heels klicking, stopping abruptly for a few seconds, walking a couple more feet. 

The music being switched off.

His eyes snap open as panic starts trickling, black and cruel, staining his morphine white.

Something tells him this is Pepper showing up at the worst time possible.

" _Tony_?"

Pepper. Pepper, definitely Pepper.

"What--Just. Okay."

"I can explain." he slurs, before opening the car door and attempting to step out. He's still groggy: Tony trips and falls.

He tries to grab onto the table he had next to him but fails, and drags an array of different pill bottles and substances to the floor with him.

Pepper rushes to help him up. He tries to push her away, loses his balance again, gives in to the humiliation (and what a stupid, _stupid_ thing to feel ashamed of) and finally accepts her help.

As she's helping him up, she snatches a tiny plastic cilinder from the floor.

Tony tries to tell her not to, but it's a perfectly useless and unnecessary use of his dwindling energies.

He leanes against the hood of the car, trying to kick start his brain into something a little more aware of its surroundings as she reads the label and sees the other bottles and the syringe and her eyes narrow, they shine with rage.

" _Oxycotin_."

"Pain killers, yeah." 

He can actually talk despite the mammoth amount of morphine, and it comes as a surprise to him.

"What do you do, _ground it up and shoot it when you can't get to heroin_?"

Her tone is far too aggressive for him right now. 

Tony Stark's ghost runs a hand through his hair.

Neither of them can handle all of this.

"Pepper. Please. Not now."

But she  _can't_  stop because this is too much. This is the definite breaking point.

She can't do this anymore, her brain is rebelling. _She can't do this_. The pills and the partying were fine, even the booze, and the _girls_ , she beared Tony sleeping around just because he'd always come back to her. Just because she loved him.

But this is different: this is maybe hard drugs and shooting stuff up and an _addiction_.

Tony Stark has grown addicted to dying all over again.

And she knows she doesn't have it in her to do this, she can't follow him into the dark this time.

There's so much one person can handle.

" _Fuck_ , Tony."

"I know. I'm sorry."

She sighs and breathes and it hurts to do so and she can't help but marvel at his beauty even though he's lost so. Much. Weight, it melted off his bones in a heartbeat. Eyes sunken.

He's sick.

She could not say a thing and she could go upstairs again, she could lock herself in a bathroom and cry there.

Or she could speak, and give herself a rest, for once, forever.

And break their hearts but save her own life.

For a second, she tells herself it's a stupid idea. A childish impulse.

"I--Tony. _Tony_ , look at me."

But she also knows, deep down, she can't stop it no matter what. 

It's inevitable.

He doesn't look up, something tells her he can sense what is to come.

"I can't do this anymore."

Tony smirks (and it hurts, God it hurts so much to see him so _defeated_ ), and his brain is still swimming in nothing. He heard her, loud and clear.

"But I thought you loved me?"

It's a question. He looks into her eyes and she wants to scream.

"I do. Christ, Tony. I do. This--this is why I'm doing this. Because I can't stand this any longer. Because I love you so much and you're going to kill yourself and I can't stand here and watch, I _don't know what to do anymore_ and it's going to kill _me_ , too. And I love you. _I love you_. Believe me when I say this, because it's true. You're all I've got. You always will be."

He looks down again without saying a word and she presses a hand to her mouth like she's done thousands of times before and shuts her eyes, tries not to cry in front of him.

It's just her shallow gasps and his pained breathing.

"Okay."

Tony says this weakly, suddenly. 

Pepper's migraine flairs up and burns through her skull.

_It's done_.

She's done it. It happened so fast she didn't even realize it happening, and now she knows she cannot possibly go back.

She doesn't want to go back. _She doesn't want to go back_. She needs time to breathe and time to rest and time to realize what's going on.

She starts by telling herself this was painful but necessary. And it feels very much like a lie, for now. But Pepper hopes the guilt will heal.

It never will.

Potts walks tentatively towards broken Tony (and knows she's just shattered yet another piece of him, knows that what she's doing is horrendously selfish). 

Her lips feel cool against his scorching forehead.

"I'm sorry." she whispers as he leans into that last kiss.

He'd like to say "I'm sorry, too." but it feels like an unimportant and painful addition to everything that has just happened (and Tony doesn't even want to stop to understand and define it just yet, too scary, too big). 

He shuts his eyes as she walks (runs, rushes) up the stairs, heels klicking. 

Vanilla perfume, a smell he'd never noticed up to now. Poignant, sweet.

_Gone_.

And she feels like smoke and ash, swirling through his bones.


	10. The Taste Of Heartbreak

Time moves slowly when painkillers don't work.

Or when you're too empty to go and get some more, and Tony doesn't know how he's landed in their

( _our_ )

( _your_ )

( _the_ )

bed, doesn't even remember crawling out of the workshop, or his knees giving out as he went up the stairs, or taking the once full, now empty bottle lying next to him from the bar. He doesn't remember crying, doesn't remember switching his phone off. He doesn't remember getting drunk but he knows he did.

He doesn't remember pretty much anything that happened between the evening before and him realizing he's in his bed right now, and there's light coming from the left windows and warmth which means it's probably mid afternoon, give or take.

He decides not to open his eyes, not just yet.

Tony basks in listening to his body rotting: lungs working, faulty, eyes watering, stinging, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, fuzzy pain already taking over his limbs. He should check the toxicity levels in his blood but they hardly even matter to him anymore.

He figures he could've put more effort in getting drunk and could've died while he was lying face down on the workshop floor (he remembers he was, suddenly, with vivid scorching clarity), choking on his own vomit.

Pepper is gone. She left him, slipped out of his life just as easily as she'd slipped into it. Some part of him still refuses to believe it but the house is so quiet, he can almost _feel_ every room echoing with long gone gasps and unsaid words, soundlessly screaming forever into the worthless, empty metal and machinery.

And it's just him and his sickening inventions.

She left him the night before, tears in his eyes and regrets dancing on her lips.

She left him, clutching a secret to her breast, life growing within life.

He doesn't know where she went, but he cares about where she went, _wants_  to know where she went.

He wants to phone her and beg for her to come back, crawl on his knees, whip himself with barbed wire begging for her compassion and for her forgiveness. He wants to make a million and one promises he knows he'll never keep and lie about his entire existence, swear on his father's legacy of rotting, wet autumn leaves that he is not dying, he is not sick, he is not lonely.

She was the only certain thing he thought he knew about himself.

Stark opens his eyes and glances to the left: it's sundown, not afternoon, orange bleeding into the heavenly view of the ocean he has from his bedroom.

It makes him sick.

He switches his phone on (no texts, no missed calls, he is dead to the world and that is exactly what he wants to be) and dials her number because, deep down, he is a foolish, little masochistic boy.

It goes to voicemail.

Tony's back hurts more than ususal and heartbreak, he realizes, tastes like alcohol poisoning and far too many sleeping pills. 

He thinks of Steve, despite himself. 

*

Steve's finally starting to doze off: once again, he's spent a night staring at the ceiling, teetering dangerously on the brink of sleep but never really falling into it. 

Eyes growing weary and brain growing slow as midnight melted into two AM melted into five AM.

He doesn't even know _why_  he can't sleep (he does, he does, he _does_ ), he blames it on the stress, blames it on the emptiness, on the roaring, excruciating summer heat.

But there's so much more to it, whether he'd like to admit it to himself or not.

There's brown eyes and dark hair

( _peggy_ )

and arrogant laughter and boastful smiles

( _tony_ )

and something churning in his stomach that is both guilt and butterflies.

There's portraits he's drawn of strong hands, full lips, kind smiles. Soldier girl and mad little inventor boy, past and present, the dichotomy, the anachronism. 

_Clichè_. 

He thinks he might love them both in different ways, the war heroine and the dying man: an elusive, sharp and vivid thought, the kind of thought one makes when tasting bittersweet insomnia.

Nighttime dresses wounds, and shows dreamers the simple, hidden truths.

Steve's skin suddenly burns and he needs to get up, get out of bed. He rips himself from sticky, sweaty sheets, stands in his bathroom for a few seconds hating himself before filling the sink with water.

Ice cold.

Nerve-paralyzing, sense-numbing, brain-clearing cold.

He dunks his head in, holds his breath.

Count to three, count to four, count to ten.

( _count until your lungs burst, and you could count forever_ )

He pulls his head out of the water and looks himself in the mirror: a little less red-eyed, a little less wrecked, a little less sweaty, still heartbroken, still confused.

Blue eye stares into blue, matted blond hair, dripping.

" _Pull your act together_ , Rogers." he hisses.

The reflection spits back the exact same words.

Steve leans back and feels his neck quiver, bones creaking, joints popping. It hurts (sharp jab, breathe in, breahte out), somewhere on the right side of his ribcage.

But it's nothing: he's definitely had worse things happen to him.

And then something (someone?) bangs on his door. Violently.

Once.

Twice.

Steve's eyes widen, and he's certain that anyone who's trying to tear his door down at half past five AM probably doesn't have the best intentions. 

He waits, slows his breathing (it's too loud in his ears, blood beating too fast), sees what is to come.

The banging happens another three times.

And then something (someone?) calls his name. Something (someone?) that sounds definitely drunk.

And Steve _thinks_  he recognizes the voice, but it's someone who should be at home, in _Malibu_.

An _entire_ _continent_  away.

"Steve-- _Steven_?"

Tony.

Yep, definitely Tony: which fills Steve with more panic that he could ever imagine.

*

He doesn't know _why_  he chose Steve.

Why he decided to jump on his private jet, ask JARVIS to check if Rogers was at the Tower, feel insanely relieved to learn he wasn't, and, ultimately, end up banging on his door at five AM, extremely drunk, but not _too_ drunk. Probably waking up the building, and then some.

Why he's standing, eyes full of tears because Pepper left him for _good_ , eyes full of tears because he's dying, because he didn't ask for help, because it's all his fault, forever and always, he's dragging them all down despite his best efforts.

He's standing in a disheveled suit (the first thing he could find), newly-blossomed syringe bruises on his arms, intoxicated. Craving drugs and death and a loved one's kiss.

He doesn't know _why_  he chose Steve, not completely, not entirely.

But when his best friend opens his door, wet hair sticking to his forehead, eyes looking so puzzled, so lost, so _scared_ , there's something in the way he says his name, bewildered, that makes Tony suddenly stumble forward, grab onto him as the door slams shut behind him.

Searching _home_  where he knows he will never find it.

He's suddenly on the floor and Pepper left him, Steve's holding him.

"She's _gone_." is all he manages to croak.

Tony cries, presses his face against Rogers' shoulder.


	11. If Madness Be The Food Of Love

He should wake up.

Does he want to wake up?

(He doesn't know).

But he is, in fact, being _forced_  to wake up by the roaring obnoxious sound of drilling coming from an apartment (or the apartment he's in? - he can't tell, just not yet, it's far too early) nearby, and it's screaming and tearing through a headache he doesn't even want to acknowledge, just leave it throbbing on the right side of his face and head.

He tries to make himself go back to sleep but he's already started to react to his surroundings: light coming in, the sound of cars on the street, hustle and bustle. The sound of someone moving around the house. His brain seems to sprint to life, even though he begs it not to.

Tony opens his eyes completely and wishes he didn't have to. As light as his sleeping is, as studded it is with sudden, midnight wakenings to a world of pain, every little hour of slumber counts.

"Are you awake?"

Tony blinks.

Alert brain or not, his mind is still too wrapped in nightmares to be able to place everything immediately, so it takes him a while to realize Steve Rogers is standing in the doorway, eyeing him worriedly. His head is cocked to the side, an eyebrow's arched. It would look almost comical, if it weren't for the fact that Steve is worrying _about_ him, which irks Tony more than it should.

Stark forces himself to sit up and every inch of his body screams as he does so. He looks around his friend's cozy living room, and then notices that Steve took the time to lie him down on an old red couch and slip his socks and shoes off.

This makes him smile.

"More or less."

Steve nods.

"Sorry about the noise, neighbor's installing a new washing machine."

"Not a problem."

Even his voice sounds sick this morning. He squeezes his eyes shut as light bites into them, curses under his breath.

When he dares to open them again, Rogers has drowned the room in merciful semidarkness. 

"Do you need anything?" the soldier asks, and tries to make it sound casual.  


"A painkiller." 

He tries to grin at Steve, but he's already breathing hard, already flinching too much .  


"I only have aspirin."  


Tony suddenly seems to remember slipping three things in his pocket before leaving Malibu. He reaches for them now, trying to remember _what_  they were, but finds his pockets empty.  


Steve notices this.  


"I took your phone and cigarettes out of your pants as you were passing out and _these_ \- he hands Tony the pricey technological contraption and the square packet and holds up a small bottle of yellow, round pills - but I'm not a hundred percent sure they're legal, so I was-"

Tony rolls his eyes.

"...Hoping I'd forgotten about them?"  


"Something like that, yeah."  


"It's Oxycotin."  


"Oxycotin?"

"Harmless. Really."  


Steve eyes him suspiciously.  


"It's _painkillers_ , Steven. They can only do good."

Rogers considers trying to keep Tony away from the drugs and alcohol, at least for the day, but one look at Stark tells him it wouldn't help: he looks much worse than the last time he saw him, and it's scary because it's only taken a little under a month to make his eyes even more sunken and his hands even more shaky and it looks like the world has finally  _crushed_ Tony Stark and he can't make it, he can't pull himself up from the ruins, the rubble.  


Which is the truth, and they both know it and hate it.  


Steve hates it because it means Tony is slowly slipping away: a thought that, for the last couple of days, he'd somehow managed to keep out of his mind (making sleep come easier), but that has just been dished in front of him in gritting teeth and poorly hidden flinches, sweat dripping, and there is no _denying_ it. And Tony's eyes, once so black and vibrant, are now nothing but the dullest of grays.

Tony hates it because it is the final defeat, the one thing he cannot conquer. Death has dipped her icy cold hands into his bloodstream, and she tinkers with it, watches it as it flows through her bony fingers, and burns his flesh.

The most exhausting thing of all is having to wake up every morning and have to face this fact, and face the destruction of others it brings with.

But he never asked them to care for him. He never asked them to _love_ him. 

And he wonders if what she said was true

( _i'm doing this because i love you_ )

or if she was just looking for a stupid excuse. But she wasn't, and he knows this.

Blaming and hating won't do good for either of them. 

His phone suddenly rings.

Tony stands up and his head spins, he knows he needs to eat and drink. The back of his mouth tastes like bile, and old alcohol, bitter cigarettes. Steve is quick to grip his arm and help him steady himself, but Tony pulls himself away from his grasp, viciously, as he looks at the caller ID.

But is there really a point anymore in hiding his illness from Rogers? Steve knows about the demon anyway, but still, some stubborn piece of Tony keeps on telling him it's better, it's for the best, it's what everybody needs: make it so they leave him alone to die on his own terms, since everything else has graciously spun out of control.

It's Pepper.

Tony's stomach seems to suddenly propel itself into his mouth, and now he is fully, completely awake. He glares at Steve and painfully makes his way into the other room (which happens to be the kitchen), and his hands are shaking even more.

"Hello?" and his voice sounds too anxious, too breathy, too pained.

" _Tony_?"

"Pep? Pepper?"

"Are you okay?"

He nearly starts to laugh, stops himself just in time. "Okay" is something he hasn't been in a long, long while.

"I stopped by our- _your_  house to get some stuff, you weren't-"

"Where are you staying, Pepper?"

"Rhodey's offered me a place to stay for now."

" _Rhodey_?"

"Yes, but it doesn't matter. I went over this morning and you weren't there."

"This morning?"

He's handling this conversation so badly he's torn between crying and screaming. 

She's quiet for a few seconds, and it buzzes into Stark's ear.

"Are you stoned?"

"Just...just hungover."

"Where are you?"

"Steve's."

"In New York?"

"No, _under the Arctic ice cap_."

He's trying to keep his tongue in check because he's scared he'll say something foolish, he's scared he'll hurt her even more than he aready has.

But he needs her.

He needs her _back_.

"I...I miss you." slips past his lips before he can stop it.

_Fragile_.

She sighs. 

"Hey..."

" _Please_?"

He wants to die even more.  


"I  _need you_."  


"I'm sorry."

She regrets this just as much as he does. 

"You know I can't do this, Tony. I can't watch you kill yourself. I can't have an addict-"

"I'll _change_."

But there's pain in the back of his neck and death in everything he does that tell a much more different tale. He cannot change because addictions are the only thing that get him by.

"No, no you _won't_ , Tony. You always promise, but you won't. And this time, if you can't change, I can't stay."

He wipes his eyes and hopes she can't hear the tears staining his voice.

"Can you just tell me one thing?"

"Of course, Tony."

"You're still in love with me, right?"

He's begging, begging, _begging_ for her to stay. 

In truth, she doesn't even know anymore. 

She cares about him, yes, but is she _in love_  with Tony Stark?

Can she lie? Does she have the will and courage to do so? Can she feed him a fabricated, gold dipped vision of life? Or should she tell him the truth and know he'll crumble?

She doesn't know what would make her feel more guilty. Tricking him, or not: either way, sooner or later, he'll suffer.

He might as well suffer now, and maybe suffer less.

" _I'm sorry_..."

She hates to see him like this.

" _Pepper_ , Pepper. Please. Jesus, _please_."

"Goodbye, Tony."

" _Pepper_?"

But there's just the soft  _click_  of her hanging up.

And Tony realizes he's hunched over the counter and he's shuddering. He's at loss all over again, and he doesn't have enough meds to get him through the day.

Shaking, crying, sobbing. He's a mess.

Does depression really do this to you?

Does _dying_  do this to you, tear down each and every one of your defences, strip you naked, leave you to become nothing but a fragile, hysterical and lonely little baby, nothing but a helpless worm?

Steve heard it all: he's standing right behind Tony and he doesn't have a clue about what to do. Or how he feels.

He tentatively rests a hand on Tony's back (and he can swear he can feel his spine press against his palm, muscle and flesh seem to have never existed) and Stark doesn't move him away.

He even slightly leans back into his delicate touch, realizes he needs a friend more than ever right now. 

"Are...are you okay?"

It's a stupid question, and Steve knows it, but he really doesn't know what else to say.

Tony sighs. Pain is clouding his mind, heartbreak makes his stomach feel funny.

He wants to let everything go, he needs fresh air and to clear the fog inside and emptiness. Pills, alcohol, partying, mindless sex. Anything.

_Anything_ he could use to undo himself and what he's done, the ghosts that haunt him late at night. 

So he does something he never thought he'd do - but there's memories of one late night spent chain smoking on the balcony of a New York five star hotel, feeling guilty for lying at Steve, feeling guilty for maybe falling in love with a fragile, scared soldier boy who does nothing but care and care and care.

And he needs to _lose_  himself. She's cut herself out of his life, he needs to stop the bleeding.

Burning nerve endings tingle where he can feel Steve's hand. And suddenly, he leans back and he's aware of leaning back.

He presses against Steve's chest: the other man's breathing seems to stop for an instant (it could mean something but it could also mean nothing, Tony thinks that maybe he's just deluding himself into believing he matters to someone), but Steve surprisingly goes with the flow (he wants to gag, he wants to run away from Tony right then and there, this is _too much all at once_ and too much confusion).

"Hold me?" Tony whispers.

And he stops to breathe as Steve's arms fold around him, and their worlds crumble, oceans burn.


	12. Summer Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woah, almost 10.000 views! Thanks everybody!! *smooches u all on the cheek*

Steve watches Tony who's eating, or rather, is trying to (but bread sticks to a thick, tired tongue, and a throat refuses to cooperate, and there's a stomach who simply can't handle it).

Tony woke up sometime after lunch and got the phone call from Pepper, and now that Steve has just managed to force him to eat something (something being toast and a glass of milk), dusk is falling.

It's late. Another day has gone by and Tony didn't even notice it. For him, time has melted into a messy, smudged goo.

For a second, he thinks that he has one day less left to live. It scares him, but feelings right now are a weak ghost of something much stronger he knows he used to feel on a day-to-day basis.

A summer storm is on the brink of happening.

In the dead quietness that seems to fill every inch of Steve's home, they can hear thunder in the not-so distance.

Tony pushes back the pile of ripped-apart bread that was once plain toast and glares at Steve. It creates a disturbance in their immobility - Steve at one end of the table, legs crossed, Tony at the other, hunched over and neck-deep in emptiness.

"I think I'm done."

Steve sighs, but, surprisingly, doesn't comment. He just nods, stands up and empties the full plate in the trash. 

"Want the milk?"

_Milk_. A child's drink, fit for a fussy little spoiled brat.

Stark smiles, exhausted, and Rogers takes it as a yes, puts the glass back down on the table.

Tony stares at it. The Oxycotin Steve agreed on letting him take stopped working about an hour earlier, but he doesn't have the energy to ask for another one, so he just swallows the pain down.

He'd like to think of himself as a brave little soldier for going through this day after day after day, but, in truth, he just thinks of himself as extremely sad and pathetic.

Steve sits back down across from him. He wants to ask a million little things but knows it would be worthless: Tony isn't going to let anyone in any time soon.

Truth (all of the truth) will come, eventually, sparsely, when he decides it and if he wants. 

Besides, truth has already hurt them more than it should've. And they've both had their share of pain for the evening.

The pitter-patter of rain against windows starts a few moments later. It disrupts the quiet, but not too much, and offers an appropriate soundtrack to their gloom.

"I think I'll go back to bed." Tony whispers after a while that they listen to it storm outside, husky voice against a backdrop of rain. He sounds centuries, if not millennia, old. And he smiles again at Steve.

Tries to. 

"Okay, Tony. Bathroom's on the right if you need it."

And Steve's throat goes pinhole thin, seeing how long it takes for Stark to stand up, put the chair back, pick up his untouched glass ("Leave it" Steve hears himself say "I'll take care of it. You go to bed.") and start walking, slowly, towards the living room, one footstep at a time. He can't shake off the feeling that he's looking at a man who's given up completely.  


Part of this is pain, there is no doubt. But most of it is desperation. It's this sadness that has fallen from above and crashed upon Tony Stark's head, it's Pepper leaving, it's finally and completely realizing that there will be  _no end to this_ . 

Tony will  _never_ feel better. He will spend his last months (weeks?) in agony and he will die in agony. 

Steve can't even begin to handle this last thought: it makes his head spin. He feels dizzy with pain and fear, heartbreak.

Under the sound of rain, he can hear a faucet being opened and being shut, coughing, the sound of vomiting (he hopes just bile and not blood). He can hear Tony trudge through the living room, bump into something, curse because of it (his pain without the aid substances is crystal clear, beyond all imagination).  


Steve shuts his eyes and drinks it all in. He starts latching onto things.  


Most of them are memories. 

Some of them are smells, sounds, thoughts. Voices.   


Progressions of color, light dancing on skin. Smiles.   


Steve fears he might lose himself in everything, if he isn't careful. Lose himself the wrong way.

But there's really no right or wrong anymore, and, even in his mind, those lines are beginning to blur.  


His flesh burns where he felt Stark's skin brush against his.

*

"Steve--?"  


He's startled and his head snaps up, he gasps, awakened. He'd fallen asleep, head resting on the kitchen table.

Tony stands in the doorway.   


Steve blinks: it's his turn to feel bewildered by an abrupt awakening.

"You all right, Stark?"

"I just wanted to thank you."

"Thank me?"

"For dinner. And the couch. And taking me in for the day. And night."

Rogers shrugs.

"You're my best friend."

He glances at the clock and then back at Tony. It's five AM.

And Stark looks somehow nervous, but Steve can't tell. Not really.

He's not good at reading people. And he's never been able to read Tony.

"So."

"So?"

Tony grabs a chair and sits. He swallows back the pain and tries to hide it.

"You want answers."

"Not necessarily." Steve lies.

"Well, then you _need_ them."

He opens his arms, welcoming. 

( _come and see the broken man)_

( _come_ )

_(all secrets revealed)_

_(one night only one pain filled night only_ )

( _see him laugh at his suffering_ )

( _he deserves no better_ )

"Ask away. I'm exhausted enough and in pain enough to not care anymore about anything."

Steve is tempted to add a "Well what about me?" but he stops just in time. He would rather say nothing. So he stares at Tony and decides to count himself lucky: late night confessions are something rare, when it comes to Tony Stark. Precious, even. 

The storm outside still rages.

"What's going on, Tony?"

What a stupid question to ask.

Tony sits back and realizes that he doesn't have to _lie_ , not when with Steve.

Steve knows.

Steve cares.

For the first time, this doesn't scare him.

"I'm dying." 

It _hurts_ , and Steve hates himself for having let Tony in so far deep.

"That--that I know."

"You mean with Pepper?"

"Also."

"I guess she couldn't handle...certain things. Habits. _Me_."

He smiles, sorrowful. He'd phoned her again in the middle of the night, making sure that it was while Steve was asleep: and she'd answered, bitter, annoyed (sad) and asked him never to call again.

There's a jab of sudden pain somewhere in his chest: Tony hisses despite himself. Steve stares at him, worried by the sound.

"I'm fine." sounds ridiculous to both of them. Stark says it anyway, wheezing.

" _Tony_ -"

"And Fury told you everything else, right?"

"I don't care about what Fury said."

"Then what else do you want to know?"

" _I don't know_."

The pain in Steve's voice leaves Tony confused, and guilty.

But Rogers doesn't, he really, honestly doesn't.

Some little part of him still wants to believe it's going to be okay, but even a fool knows that it's no longer an option. 

Steve's mind has frozen.

This is a late-night conversation he never asked to have.

"Do you want to _see_ it?"

"-- _What_?"

Tony runs a hand through his hair.

"See _it_. See the damn thing. The arc reactor."

He opens his shirt before Steve can even reply, and his hands are shaking both with rage and frustration and just because his hands _shake_ , period. That's what the illness does, amongst hundreds of thousands of other things.

And there he is, beared, weaknesses and all, standing in the middle of a New York kitchen while the world outside is drowned in rain. He can feel his bones creak, encased in skin, and knows Steve can _see_ them. He's lost that much weight in that little time. 

But there's something else he knows contributes to Rogers' bewildered expression: and it's the web of black originating from the center of his heart. Darkness crawling through him, born from the staggering blue light of his reactor. The rotting veins paint a crown of thorns around the tiny glowing blue light, they bleed almost into his neck.

His blood's started to rot, visibly. It's started to poison him completely.

"Jesus, _Tony_ -"

Steve stands up and comes closer. He can _see_ it, he can see the blood show through Tony's skin, black and burning. 

He can't help but run a finger along a darkened vein, but Stark pulls back suddenly.

" _Don't_ \--" he snarls.

Steve pulls his hand away immediately. He tries to look at Tony but Tony looks down, far, distant. 

"I--Christ. _What is that_?"

Tony shrugs: defense mechanism. On the outside, the humiliating weakeness and pain he showed only hours earlier is forgotten and archived, never to be dwelled on again. 

" _Palladium_ , Captain."

He is surprisingly alert for a man who hasn't been sleeping well for months and has gone through mammoth amounts of any substance possible just to quench the physical pain.

"Don't do that." Steve suddenly and abruptly snaps.

"Do _what_?"

"Not care."

"Does it matter?"

"It matters. _To me_."

Steve's just seen with his very own eyes the ultimate proof, the final piece of the puzzle.

And that's it.

There's no denying it, there's no lying, no delusions, no telling himself it's maybe someday going to be okay.

Because it isn't. It is so, so clear that it is _never_ going to be okay.

There are black veins that prove it. There is an entire existence dwindling to its end and it is a beautiful, precious, magnificent existence despite all of its flaws, an existence Steve now understands he cannot function without. 

This is the first time he's ever loved someone ever since Peggy.

And it's feeling more _right_ with every passing moment, even though he's scared, even though he knows they'll have to work on it every day for the rest of the time they have together. Which is nothing but a heartbeat.

Rogers thinks, for a second, to be able to save Tony. To be able to make it all right for him, until the end comes.

His best friend and his maybe lover (sweet and forbidden, it sends a terrified shiver down his spine) and his almost something.

They both need to chase away the fear of an end that is looming, an end that is growing nearer and nearer. An end that neither of them _can_ accept.

Or want to.

And, since nighttime always whispers to lovers, and the Lady Nyx always dances with a spark of madness in her eyes,  _Steve needs to say it_.

He doesn't know _why_ , he just _does._  

"It shouldn't matter, Steve. You shouldn't care. I'm not worth-"

The weight of the words rolls around in Steve's lips for an endless second and then

" _I love you_ ."  


blossoms. 

There's more tears and more pain in it than he thought. But, for now, this will have to be enough.  


Tony's jaw drops, he takes a step back.   


"No.  _No_ , Steve."   


He shakes his head, tugs at his hair.   


"Don't make Pepper's same mistake."  


"Tony, I don't care."  


"You're wasting your time, Rogers. I'll be dead soon anyway."

Steve wants to scream.

" _I don't care_."

"I'll break your heart."

Steve doesn't care - can't care. He's gone too far now. Because saying something like that can't simply be erased, it can't be forgotten, or ignored.

So he says it again.

"I love you."

"Stop--STOP SAYING THAT!"

Tony is utterly terrified. He's staring at Steve, eyes wide, hands raised, palms open towards him.

He's shaking even more than usual. And Steve can see this and can see the pain and the loss and the confusion, and the light his reactor shines onto his face. It digs through his flesh, and he's a bony mask, eyes comically wide.

"You love me too."

Tony does.

Deep down, he does. Past the arrogance, the pride, the feelings he still has for Pepper (and always will), past the frustration and resentment, Tony Stark _does_  love Steve Rogers. 

But love means depending on someone and love means mattering to someone.

Love means breaking someone's heart.

And he thought breaking someone's heart would've been a banal thing to him, but Pepper proved him wrong (that had always seemed to be her speciality).

Tony's also afraid of having _his_  heart broken. It's been shattered far too many times: by his father, by his mother, by friends and family. By himself, his deeds, the things he's said and done.

"Steve--"

"No. No, _you_ listen - the Captain grabs Tony's hand (he doesn't pull it away) - because I need you. And you need me."

"I don't need anybody."

It's the worst lie he's ever told.

" _You do_."

Steve presses his lips against Tony's, and they taste warm and bitter. 

Tony Stark kisses the Captain back, and hopes he can't taste his tears.


	13. Survival Instincts

Tony's lying on the couch, curled up, knees brought up to his chest, his back to Steve. He's fallen into a heavy painkiller-induced slumber for the last three hours (Stark's finally slipped out of his suit and thrown on an old pair of Rogers' gym pants and a shirt, and everything looks slightly too big on his emaciated frame).

Steve sits and watches him, and he's still terrified, bewildered.

Scared, unnerved, nervous: there are about a million different words he could use right now, and none of them would even come close to describing how he's feeling. And it doesn't make sense, really, a fully-grown man acting so scared when confronted with things he should be used to by now, like heartbreak and falling in love and  _death_.

He realizes he tasted death that night in the underlying bitterness in Tony's saliva, and he saw it in the way his hands shake all the time (and he'd never noticed up to now), and he heard it in the tremor in his voice, sensed the neverending sadness, neverending tiredness.

Emptiness in his eyes and in his smiles.

Steve wishes he could pick him up and hold him tight, and scare the darkness away. He wants to run his fingers through Tony's hair and see the light come back to his best friend's gaze, make his breathing light and easy. He wants to kiss him again and rip the illness out, through breaths and sighs and smiles.

He can't deny it, can he? Because there was  _something_  in Tony's warm lips and there was something in the way he seemed so small and scared and, hell, maybe it's just Steve's innate kindness, but there was a tiny voice nagging, too, telling him that maybe he could've been the only one able to put the pieces back together.

And then it happened, suddenly, a kiss neither of them really wanted (too early, too confused, too pained), a kiss dictated much more by instinct than by feelings (but, deep down, aren't they the same thing?), a kiss so precious and so pure it left them breathless.

And now Steve watches Tony sleep because there's ghosts dancing in his mind that do not want to quiet down, and they are both kind ghosts and evil ghosts. Some are ghosts of things he's said and done (and the way Tony's lips feel remind him somehow of Peggy's), others are ghosts of resentment and second thoughts, and some, but not many, are ghosts of things yet to come. Of tying his life to that of another man's. Of watching him die, and it's been a hard thing to bear already.

Can he bear it till the end?

Tony squirms in his sleep, brow suddenly furrowed. Steve clenches his jaw, ready for an emergency that doesn't come: Stark's tense muscles relax after a few seconds, he crawls back into his unconciousness. 

Rogers is starting to overthink and somehow regret his actions, and this comes just as sunlight peeks through the closed drapes.

The storm has passed.

Bible school sits on his shoulder and weighs him down despite himself: he cannot unsee the assumed wrongness of what he's let himself do, of what he's thinking of doing, of what he feels like doing. Steve stands up, and sighs. He walks over to the window and glances out: there's puddles on the road, large mirrors. Sunlight kisses them and makes the water dance with diamonds.

A dog barks somewhere.

A taxi drives by and it's a pleasant whir in the otherwise still air: it's early, hardly anyone is awake. The hustle and bustle will start soon, though. He thinks he should move it and go and get some milk before Tony wakes up and wonders if that's a  _thing_  with married couples, one goes out to get the milk before the other one wakes up.

Which is ridiculous: they're not even a couple. They kissed, this is true (and Rogers' skin feels hot and it feels ice cold, ripples, goosebumps), and Steve told Tony he loved him and maybe didn't even realize the intensity he used, and Tony said nothing back, tried to escape a situation that was clearly too much for him.

_Too much_. He is so scared of this love he can't really understand and, yet, he's absolutely petrified by the idea of being rejected. 

Steve leans against the windowsill, back towards the road, and and looks at Tony who's floating where, hopefully, pain can't reach him. Or, if it does, it's soon forgotten. He longs to go just an inch closer, rest his forehead against his neck, listen to time stop spinning. Take a breath.

He wants to feel his skin melt into Tony's, wants to lose track of whose body is whose, feel each nerve climb to unbearable heights, screams muffled by hands, by pillows, by luck - but there will be time for that, and for promises, and nighttime sketches and stargazing. Out of the blue, he swears to himself that there _will_ be time for that, and so much more. He needs it.

They need it both.

Rogers grabs the house keys.

Summer heat building up, already on the brink of choking the city.

And buying milk has boiled down to simple survival instincts: and Steve knows he needs to take his mind off things, or else he will implode.

*

The home is considerably cooler than the outside world, and Steve reckons it's because the drapes haven't been opened ever since Tony stumbled in through the door.

The air smells of dust and sweat.

He puts the keys down and tries to make his way towards the kitchen in quietness (as to not wake up Tony), but, halfway there, Steve catches himself marvelling at Stark who's beautiful and thin and sad. He loves him.

The concept makes his head spin.

"Did some shopping?"

He's startled by Stark, catches his breath as if he were caught stealing (and maybe losing yourself into someone else is a little bit like stealing: you take a piece of them, you wrap it up inside yourself and let it mix and mingle with you. You take them, you make them yours), black eyes rest into anxious blue for a second before looking down, and Rogers is greeted by a smile.

Tony looks tired despite having just woken up. 

Tired life, tired flesh. 

He's sick of fighting the illness, but he can't help it: survival instincts prevent him from doing any permanent damage. 

In truth, no matter how suicidal he is, he's always _a step_  from taking too many pills, a step from drinking too much, a step from throwing himself off a balcony, a step, a step, a step.

When Pepper left, this is true, he was sent over the edge, but Steve came (only because he went to him, and he wonders if finding the energy to jump on a plane was just another trick played by instincts) and it's only been three days and the chasm is still deep but the bleeding's stopped, kissed better by warm, tentative lips.

"I--yeah. Bought some milk."

Rogers shows Tony the plastic bag. 

"Did you get some sleep, Steve?"

"No, not really.", and as soon as he says this Steve can feel the heaviness of his own bones. He's beyond tired. He's exhausted, worn down.

Neither of them can really look eachother in the eye, and neither of them really want to say anything, and both of them are burning inside and out. Aching for something to happen. Anything that will tell them what the future holds. A sign.

_Anything_.

"Come here, Steve."

But, after all, Tony Stark is not a man who sits around and simply _waits_. He takes and owns and cherishes, and even as a dying man he will not deny himself this right.

_Control_.

Which he's just started to think is nothing but survival instincts.

Rogers doesn't move: it feels as if each and every conflicting thought he's ever had in the last three hours has condensed itself and pinned him to the ground, dark tentacles blocking his every move. He wants to but he can't.

"Come on."

Steve swallows (uneasy) and Tony smirks, arches an eyebrow (uneasy just the same).

They realize that this love, if not nutured fully, will be nothing but a waiting game.

Waiting for Tony to wake up. Waiting for the truth to come out. Waiting for feelings to make sense.

Waiting to die.

But time runs out swiftly when nobody takes action, so Steve creeps an inch closer (and it's still all so new to him) and realizes that by doing so he seals his fate, maybe the fate of both of them. 

Tentative. There's no right and wrong anymore, and maybe there never was (except for in his head).

He made a choice by kissing Tony, and it wasn't an easy choice, but it certainly was a right one.

He crawls towards the couch, milk still in hand and crouches down, next to Stark. He envelopes him in his arms and h is head rests on Tony's chest (feeble beating heart, be still, and breathe), who smiles to himself and shuts his eyes and purrs. Almost absent-mindedly, his fingers start running through Steve's soft hair.

It feels right and it feels good. It isn't Pepper, this is true, but Pepper after all is irreplaceable.

Steve will have to do to keep him sane and he is more than enough.

"It's gonna be hard." Stark says after a few minutes.

"Hard?"

"If we'll want to make this work."

Rogers opens his eyes (he hadn't been aware of closing them) and stares at nowhere in particular.

"Do  you _want_ to make this work?"

"I  _need_  this, Steve. You're all I've got."

Steve falls silent. It hits him hard, and mattering to someone so much is both terrifying and uplifting. He'd never thought people _mattered_  to Tony up to the breakup with Pepper.

And now this.

"Because I'm an asshole and I'm an idiot and I need someone to keep me in check."

" _Do you think I don't know_ ?"

Stark giggles, then sighs.

"But, eventually, I won't be able to go to the bahtroom. I won't be able to eat. I'll be unable to walk and maybe won't manage to recognize you anymore. My body will fail completely.  _You'll have to watch me die_ , Steve ."

Tony pulls Steve's head up and makes him look at him, starts running a thumb along his cheek.

"Can you put up with that, Steven?"

Part of him hopes he'll answer "No, I can't. I thought I could, for a second, but I can't." because he can't bear knowing that his downfall will drag Rogers along into the deep. He cannot bear breaking another soul, not after Pepper's. 

But another part of him hopes Steve will say "Yes, of course. I'll be with you, forever and ever." because he needs someone to hold him at night, he needs someone to still believe and pick up the pieces and make things okay. 

Steve knots his fingers with Tony's, and they fit perfectly, missing jagged pieces that somehow spell out  _home_. 

"I love you." Steve whispers. 

He smiles at Tony and they are perfectly aware of what awaits them and, for once, they do not care. 

Death will come but they can be stronger than death, they can laugh and love and live and keep her at bay for as long as possible, and they know they will be able to grab time and stop it from running. They will tame the odds and tame Tony's pain with blues records and classic rock and trips to old, dusty bookstores.

They will dance on rooftops and try to get drunk and they will take care of eachother, because Steve needs mending just as much as Tony does.

And they will be confused and they will be awkward and they will dream, and soothe eachother's nightmares.

And they will live as much as they can in the little time they will have together.


	14. Dead Man Walking

Tony stands in front of the bathroom mirror. 

He senses movement behind him (the bathroom door's open) but gives little notice to it, preferring to indulge in the sight of paper-thin skin, blue veins running up and down his arms.

He is painfully reminded that he needs something stronger than Oxycotin and he tilts his head to the side, eyes fluttering open.

Stark sees his own reflection in the glass, and it's a skeleton and a ghost and a carcass. He smiles and the reflection cracks and shows teeth and lips that curve into a tired grin that should be a smile, a collection of tiny wrinkles blossoming around his eyes.

His shoulders are slumped, bones - visible - peek through the fabric of Steve's too big t-shirt. Eyes circled with blacks and blues and a hint of yellow, eternally bloodshot. 

Tony is, for a second, unable to recognize himself: he's aged so much in so little time. And he didn't realize it, he never took the time to look at himself.

And now he's taken the time to stop, and he's regretting it.

He smirks because he can't unsee the perpetual irony of this situation, how stupid he's been, how arrogant to think he didn't need help.

He takes his shirt off and stares at his chest. The dark web of veins seems to grow more poisonous with every passing day, black and deep purple. A map of death that burns and screams, he longs to rip the veins out and watch them throb, unearth the poison and watch it flow out of his exposed blood vessels.

Stark taps a single finger against the reactor. It's a tiny, metallic sound. 

He's scared. Jagged veins he cannot control are killing him slowly, and he cannot do anything but bow his head and give in (his mood has shifted so quickly between now and when he woke up: invincible one moment, he is extremely fragile the next. In truth, he thinks it's Steve's presence that makes the difference).

"You  _really_  fucked it up this time, Tony." he says with quietness brought on by defeat as his eyes wander across the skin that stretches across his sternum and ribs. Skin that sucks in poison daily. Skin that always seems to be on the verge of splitting.

He sighs and starts slipping the t-shirt back on, when he glances once more in the mirror and catches a glimpse of Steve staring at him. Tony doesn't say a word, just swallows.

Rogers leans against the bathroom doorway, a coffee mug held tight in his hand. He stares at the wall in front of him and thinks he should redecorate (there's shining blue - deadly - light that's just been scorched into his eyes and he wants to erase it).  


"I was thinking - Steve starts, out of the blue - that maybe you'd like to go somewhere today?"  


Tony finishes putting his shirt on and rubs a hand over his face.  


"No." he says sternly.

"You've been cooped up in here for what, three days?"

"I don't feel like it."

"You can't live like a hermit."

Tony flips around to stare at the Captain. 

"Listen, for some reason it was quietly agreed by neither of us that I was going to sit around and wait to  _die_  - and Steve flinches - here in your house, and I'm perfectly okay with it, but this doesn't make you eligible to give me orders."

"I'm not giving you orders, I'm helping. "  


"Help poor lost civillians. You're far better at it."

"You're going to end up even more depressed than you already are."

"I don't  _care_ , Steve. I don't feel like leaving the house."

Rogers fights the urge to punch the wall. 

"What are you so scared of, Tony?"

Oh, he's scared of many things. He's scared of people looking at him and seeing the flesh wither and die with every breath. He's scared of not being able to walk properly. He's scared of tripping and falling and being too weak to stand back up. He's scared of having to be forced to ask Steve for help, and he feels as if he's already asked more than enough. He feels tiny, undeserving, aggavated, weighed down, helpless.

Weak and dying, dying,  _dead._

"There's nothing I'm afraid of, Steven."

Steve sighs and suddenly nods slowly. Tony Stark is an exhausting individual.

"Okay."

" _Okay_?"

"Yep, Tony. Okay."

Stark arches an eyebrow.

"You're okay with me not going out of the house?"

" _Perfectly_ okay with it."

Tony is starting to feel uneasy, and doesn't really know why, but there's something in the way Steve's cocking his head to the side and smirking that tells him that tragedy is about to hit.

And it does ("Steve, what the fuck do you think you're doing?") in the shape of Steve suddenly tackling him and picking him up (he's so light it's scary) and hoisting him over his shoulder ("If you don't put me down I am getting you arrested for invading my personal space.") before dragging a kicking and thrashing Tony ("Your optimism and perseverance make me want to puke.") out of the door, into the elevator, down a flight of stairs and onto the street (attracting quite a few stares).

He puts Stark down.

" _There_. You're outside, and you didn't even get hurt."

Tony flinches.

"I'm allergic to sunlight."

"You're allergic to _rules_ , not sunlight."

And Tony can't deny that the warmth filling his aching bones feels somehow pleasant, somehow relaxing. It makes his mouth taste a little less bitter and his blood feel a little less poisonous.

"So, where to?"

" _Your house_."

"You've made me drag you all the way down here, don't make me carry you all the way up."

"I can go up the stairs on my own two feet, Captain." 

But, in truth, he doesn't mind Steve carrying him around.

It makes him feel safe in ways he never thought it could.

*

They're sitting in a tiny ice cream shop small enough for it not to be too full and for Tony-the-asshole-celebrity not to be bothered by too many people.

Steve smiles at Tony from over the mound of whipped cream and chocolate ice cream he's delved into. Stark's settled for a small sundae, vanilla and caramel sauce that's been mostly reduced to yellowish ice cream goop, stirred and stirred and stirred.

He glares at Steve, who laughs out loud.

"C'mon, Tony, the outside world isn't _that bad_."

Tony's (pretending he's) furious and doesn't say anything. He simply continues to stir his ice cream, and the metal spoon clinks against the glass bowl. 

He isn't going to give Steve the satisfaction of knowing that this - the ice cream shop and the sunny day and Steve going out of his way to cheer him up and seeing him smile - is more than enough. The illness might've broken him and reduced him to twisted metal pieces and whizzing gears, but there's still a shrivel of pride.

So Stark won't let Rogers know he's beaten him. He is not going to tell him he's managed to find a way through the iron armor, that he's already managed to demolish the ashy remnants of the defenses Pepper had nearly destroyed and from the ruins build new, maybe even stronger ones in a matter of _days_.

He's not going to let Steve know that there's something in the way he smiles and looks down and blushes, something in the blond hair and blue eyes and sterling silver grin, that there's _something_  ancient and new and confused in this brave little soldier boy, some mysterious puzzle Tony knows he's going to waste all of the time he has left trying to decode and unlock.

Tony Stark's always been good with machinery, and there was whizzing that sounded just a little off when he listened to Steve's heartbeat for the first time, and he can tell by the way Rogers sometimes flinches that there's gears that aren't turning too smoothly.

Tony Stark longs to fix those broken bones and strong, broken eyes, he wants to dip his hands into Steve's essence, let it brush against his body, electricity and blood and life exchanged through skin pores and dreams.  


He is in love, ruthlessly so, and it's with angry eyes and a light heart that he thinks a regretful scolding to Destiny and the Gods for having interwined their lives in such a special way just a minute too late. But it doesn't matter, not really, as he looks at Steve who's about to stand up to go and pay.

_It doesn't matter_ , and Tony suddenly realizes Rogers is somehow aware of all that's whirling through his mind, because he rests a hand against his shoulder, gently squeezes.

Summer sunlight creeps through the large glass windows, and all, for a second, shines golden. 

Tony Stark smiles: there is no regret, no spite, no resentment. There is joy.

It feels like laughter, crystal clear, born inside his chest, against his mind, up his throat.

He gives in to Steve even before he's started playing, and to others, the image of Tony laughing curled up in an ice cream parlor booth is just the one of a madman, laughing at trees and birds and life and his unfortunate predicament.

But to Steve, it is the sound of angels, pearly white wings against the darkest blues.

And for the first time, the illness has truly lost.

Life triumphs.


	15. A Paraphrase Of Suicide

Steve opens his eyes ever so slightly and grunts.

He thinks he heard someone moving around the house but he’s not sure, the feeling lingers between certanity and dream, until he hears footsteps twice again and the sound of a ( _his_ ) fridge being opened.

Rogers glances at the ghastly red numbers on his alarm clock: it’s three AM.

He could just ignore the noise but curiosity takes the best of him, so he rolls out of bed, groaning and cursing Tony Stark between his teeth.

He runs a hand through matted hair as he makes his way towards the kitchen. One glance at the couch and it’s just as he thought: it’s empty.

Tony’s nosing through the freezer, wearing nothing but a bedhseet wrapped around his shoulders, draped across his body. Steve sees this and squints, uncomfortable, although Stark seems to take little to no notice in him, preferring to fill a glass first with ice, then with whatever alcohol he’s just managed to scavage. But the bottle's half empty, and Rogers suspects Stark's been up and about for quite some time.

Tony glances up as he drinks and actually finally  _does_  notice the Captain, so he nods at him and smiles.

Rogers sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Drunk?"

"Not yet." 

Stark smirks but Steve frowns at him, and his smile falters a little. But just a crack: it's virtually impossible to guilt trip Tony Stark.

"Want some?"

" _It's three AM_."

"The night is young and your liver is practically indestructible."

"I can't even get drunk.  _Why are you awake and drinking_?"

"My painkillers wore out."

"Couldn't you just take another one?"

“Too many pills are bad for you, Stevie-boy.”  Tony hisses.

He’s tired and suffering and not in the mood to argue with anyone about anything. All he wants is for his brain to shut off and his muscles to stop aching.

He wants to get drunk, simply put. Not that he needs anyone's approval to do so, since they're all happily grown men. So he marches past Steve, bottle and glass in hand, and it all becomes vaguely surprising and surreal when the Cap does nothing to stop him, limiting himself to shake his head.

"It's not going to save your life."

He says this with sadness mixed to defeat and humiliation in knowing he was so naive to think two days without alcohol were going to cure Tony.

They only made it worse.

Tony scowls at Rogers but doesn't reply, opening the window and leaning forward, letting the moderately warm July air try and cool off his bones, and maybe even their attitudes. 

"I just want to get drunk."

"I can't let you do that."

Because Steve knows that Tony getting drunk is nothing but a paraphrase of suicide, another way of Tony trying to erase himself. It's Tony giving in to self destruction and Tony not caring about others. Or maybe caring  _too much_  about others, wanting to save them all from having to see him ache.

But watching Tony waste away is a hundred times better than having to watch him lie flat on his face in a pool of his own vomit. There's quiet, peaceful (and maybe even a little morbid) dignity in the first, there is none in the latter.

The room feels tight and it feels warm, hot, oppressive. Unbearable, Stark looks at the city below and around them and thinks he's running out of time and chances of seeing the ocean.

( _the ocean_?)

( _but mom brought you there a lifetime ago_ )

The incongruence between his mood, that last thought and the fact that he was planning on getting drunk just a minute before make him burst out laughing, bitter towards life and the Universe.

Steve stares at him, equally bewildered.

"I think I'm going crazy." Stark spats out, a smirk still dancing on his lips.

"Weren't you out of your mind already?"

"I want to see the ocean, Steve."

" _Right now_?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. You're drunk."

"No, no. I'm not. Well I am, a little. But I want to see the ocean before it's too late."

Steve woders why in God's name did he ever decide to take care of Tony Stark. It's been less than a week and the man's already proven to be quite a handful. And now this, which contradicts everything Tony's ever done, from wanting to die alone to wanting to spend his last days cooped up in a tiny ratty New York apartment.

"Tomorrow."

"No. No, listen. I went there - once. With my Mom, and I don't remember how and I don't remember why but it was late at night. I was tiny, real tiny. Maybe six, maybe younger."

A repressed memory has just flared up inside his tired old brain. He needs to hunt for it, and find it again, and cherish it. Make up for lost years and fabricated lies.

"Tony,  _tomorrow_."

A petulant, whiny little spoiled boy with issues bigger than his ego.

"No, Steve. I need this."

And Tony realizes that indeed he  _does_  need this right now, much more than getting drunk. His limbs already feel a little bit fuzzy, he thinks he can make it throught the night if he focuses on something else.

"Steven,  _please_?"

His voice is more urgent than he wants it to be.

And how can Steve deny this request to a Tony who is so thin, so sick, so lost? He's wrapped in a white and blue striped bedsheet, the arc reactor shining through the cloth, and his eyes are glazed over both by pain he can no longer bear and tears he doesn't want to acknowledge. And Steve  _loves_  Tony, loves him with every single fiber of his being, so he nods after a few minutes

"Sure.  _Fine_. Go get dressed."

and wonders for the millionth time if he's not the one gone crazy (he isn't).

*

Steve sits on the beach, pants rolled up to his knees, checkered shirt rolled up to his elbows and it's almost pitch black, if it weren't for the neons and the car lights and the street lights bleeding onto them in cold energy-saving electronics.

He watches Tony who stands a few feet away from him, pants rolled up too, sea water brushing against his knees. The ocean is quiet at night and he thinks he can almost listen to him breathe.

Rogers runs a hand through sand and feels it flow through his fingers, it hisses, almost whispers. Right now, he thinks of himself as a father looking over a fragile son, and not a _lover_ \- the word makes him blush in ways he didn't think he ever could again, not after the hurricane that Peggy had been, but maybe it's okay. It's how things are meant to be.

He's the one thing standing between Tony and self annihilation, or so he likes to think. It boosts his pride, and his self worth.

Tony bends down and feels every cell in his body screech as he does so, and dips his hands underneath the water. He stares at them, pale and ethereal, long webby fingers dancing, and for a second wonders if he could slip away amongst the blues along with them.

But the thought lasts nothing but a heartbeat, and he realizes how  _selfish_  it would be of him to drown himself with Steve watching.

He's already dying on Roger's watch (and he never asked for it even though he won't deny knowing that there's someone there makes him feel much safer), suicide would just be cruel.

Tony breathes in salty air and feels his lungs expand, his diaphragm flex. His poisoned blood absorbs fresh oxygen and feeds his body.

Stark pulls himself back up and runs wet hands through his hair, over his face. He counts the ribs under his shirt and the vertebrae from the base of his skull to his shoulders.

The imperfect human machine works on despite the flaws and decay. He can't stop marvelling at it for doing so.

He's both flesh and wire. A heart made of metal scraps and the sacrifice of a man he knew (and knows still) absolutely nothing of except for his name and where he came from, blood and chemical reactions, a lot of guilt, a little bit of sleepless nights. 

He forced Steve to rush over to a beach in the middle of the night searching for a memory he isn't even really sure is real or not, maybe it was just what remained of that night's dreams. But the dark sky crashes and towers over them both, and Tony wishes he could still be naive enough to mistake airplanes and city lights for stars.

He stopped doing that sometime after his eighth birthday and has regretted it ever since.

He came here looking for his mother and for childhood innocence but didn't find either, hoping he could somehow apologize to his childhood self and an absentee mother for

( _for what_?)

for dying, maybe. But, in truth, he should apologize to a lot of people for dying.

First of all, to himself. And Rogers. The entire team.

To  _Pepper_.

To the Universe. To life, for having not lived enough and not the way he actually wanted.

But it's too late to have regrets. It's too damn late, for  _anything_.   


Tony digs his toes into the sand and feels algae under his feet, lets himself indulge in the thought of how the beach would be during the day, with children and mothers and families that all hid secrets but could pretend at least for an hour or two knowing that nobody else there except for them knew anything about their troubles.

He suddenly and violently feels lonely.

"Steve?"

And letting himself ask for company surprises him. But maybe, now that he has nothing to lose and a reason to live, he can afford the risk.

"Tony?"

The soldier stands up and walks up to him, slight worry in his voice.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine - Stark swallows the tears back where they came from -  _wanna go for a swim_?"

And Tony slips his hand in Steve's and smiles so sweetly Rogers can't pull away nor refuse (two things he'd never dream of doing, but still), his stomach churns: butterflies.

They take off their shoes and slip into water, fully clothed, not stopping to strip or undress because this moment isn't about that. There will be time for making love and kissing and promises whispered against silky skin that will never be kept, but right now Tony needs to soothe his skin that hurts and burns and he does so while holding onto the man he's decided to fall in love with, on a beach he didn't even know exist and where they probably shouldn't even be, under lights that could be airplanes.

But also could be stars.

*

The subway car (flickering lights, metallic rattle, the foul smell of daytime's sweat and rubber burning somewhere) is nearly empty except for an old woman with her dog and two men whose clothes are soaked wet and whose shoes are full of sand.

Tony's huddled close to Steve, head resting against his chest. They left the beach as the sun started rising and took the subway on his insistance, even though it stops nowhere near the apartment building and the alcohol's somehow soothing effects have long vanished. 

Steve moves wet hair out of a sleeping Tony's face, runs a finger along Stark's stubbly jawline. The other man furrows his brow in his slumber but does little else.

The lady sitting across from them looks up from her dog and smiles. Not knowing what else to do, Rogers smiles back at her, slightly awkward.

"He's sick, isn't he?"

Her voice is soft and sweet and kind, but it makes the Captain wince nonetheless: too close to home. 

But a look at her tells him she did not speak because she recognized Tony Stark (she looks homeless more than anything), but because she can _see_  it in his face and in the million and one creases of his skin and in the shallow breathing, circled eyes. And Steve can see it too. 

Rogers swallows and it takes him a second to collect his thoughts. She looks at both of them placidly and asks for nothing, he could not answer and she would be perfectly okay with it.

"Yeah, he's not doing too well."

She sighs, but it isn't an entirely sad sigh.

"My husband looked a lot like him when he was going. Same unhealthy looking skin, same dark circles under his eyes. Of course, he wasn't as handsome as your boy - and she chuckles - but he was beautiful to me."

( _your boy_ )

Steve glances at Tony and thinks of when he was truly beautiful - before alcohol and drugs and the illness - and thinks of how much he looks like his father wether he wants it or not. A lot has to do with the arrogant glint in his eyes. But the shape of the face is similar, too.  The lips, maybe. 

The train stops, the doors ding open, none of them get up to leave. The little old lady ruffles her dog's fur.

"My Arnold died of cancer, a nasty brain tumor when he was forty."

"I'm sorry." Steve croaks apologetically.

"It's certainly not  _your_  fault he died. It wasn't mine, either. The same way it's not your fault  _he_ 's dying."

She nudges towards sleeping Tony and this hits so close to home Rogers clutches Tony's shoulder a little tighter and swallows with immense difficulty.

He hates being reminded of such things so much he wants to disappear. But he can't be rude to her for doing this (she meant no harm at all) and he certainly doesn't want to be.

"I took care of him as he went. And believe me, it was horrid at times. Entire nights spent awake with him raving on about his dead mother, or things that had happened decades before. It got especially trying when he couldn't eat on his own anymore, or when he used to wet himself. But most of the times, I would read to him. And there were times when he was lucid, and those were the best. But he felt loved throughout it all - her voice starts cracking ever so slightly - and that was the important thing."

Her lips curl back into her usual smile. It's the smile she gives every and each stranger she meets on the street that's nice enough to give her a dollar, or just offer her lunch, maybe stop for a chat, but Steve doesn't know this and none of the others she encounters do either.

So they think that her sweet little smile is only for them, which is, in some ways, the truth.

"You make sure of that, kid. Make him feel loved: he already feels bad, don't make it worse. If he wants to go for a late night swim, you go with him."

She winks and Steve lowers his eyes and maybe even blushes a little.

"Love him the same way you've loved him all your life, and maybe something more. Make the time he has left the best possible. And don't worry about him not getting into Heaven for loving you, kid - she points a finger and silences Steve before he can say anything - I had a grandson like you two. He took much better care of me than his aunts and uncles ever did. He got mixed up in the wrong stuff, but, ever since, I've never doubted for one second that he got into Heaven, even though his mother thought quite differently."

She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand but her smile doesn't fall for an instant. She does not regret what has happened, how she's ended up, because every little puzzle piece of her life has had a reason and a purpose. And with pain comes clarity sometimes, and truth.

The subway train stops once again, the doors ding open. 

"Well, this is where I get off."

The old woman gets up extremely slowly, Steve can almost hear her joints creaking. She calls the dog - "Here, Barnabas!" - smiles one last time at Steve and Tony.

"Take care of him. That's all I ask."

She walks out, the doors shut, the train moves again. 

Stark stirs and wakes up for a second, coughs a few times.

"Are we there yet?" he croaks.

"No, just a few more stops - Steve, on impulse, presses his lips against the other's, tastes saltwater on his skin - now go back to sleep. You need it."

Stark nods and slips seamlessly back into his realm of dreams. Steve kisses his temple, rests his head against him too, decides to shut his eyes.

Just for a moment.


	16. Fireworks (The First Promise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was technically supposed to be up for the 4th of July.  
> But things happened, buildings exploded, lives were at stake and things didn't really go as planned.

Tony stumbles into the home, and he’s shivering. Cold and pain mingle inside of his weary bones, saltwater makes his eyes sting.

He is beyond exhausted, and he can feel the pain climb up from his feet and through his kneecaps and across his hips, into his back.

Feeding onto nerve endings and his marrow.

But he is  _happy_ , he knows he could touch God if he wanted to, right now and then. He could brush the dawn-tainted sky with his fingertips.

But mindless joy cannot feed an exhausted body, and so his knees give out before he can really realize it.

“Yep. There you go.”

Steve is quick to grasp him and hold him steady. He places a hand on his back, helps him sit on the edge of the couch. Tony grabs onto Steve’s arm and leans his pounding head against Roger’s chest. The soldier runs his hand through his wet hair.

“All right, let’s get you into bed.”

Rogers slips an arm under Tony’s knees and the other one around his hips. Tony seems surprised and slightly annoyed.

“There’s no need to carry me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re  _exhausted_.”

He sets him onto the bed and slips his wet clothes off, leaving Stark in nothing but his underwear.

“Right. So. - Steve disappears for a minute or so, returns with a jug full of water and a glass. He puts them onto the bedside table, places a couple of Oxycotins next to them - Two. And none more.”

“And I’m not on the couch.” Tony manages to force his exhausted brain to notice. He looks up at Steve, glassy-eyed.

“My bed’s comfier.”

“I don’t… - Tony blinks and swallows, shakes his head as the migraine starts numbing his senses - I don’t want to hassle.”

“ _You’re not_.”

Kind but stern, Steve smiles at him. The first thing that comes to mind when looking at Stark right now - matted, slightly humid hair falling over his eyes, buried in pillows that seem to engulf him completely, wide eyes darting from side to side in what probably is a last-ditch attempt at staying awake - is probably a very lost and very tired kitten.

Steve stretches and feels his spine pop.

He needs to wash salt and sand off his skin - they both do, but it seems to Rogers that Tony needs rest much more than a warm bath. And he’s right: Tony’s already taken both pills and the chemicals will soon soothe the ache deep inside his chest long enough for him to fall asleep. So Steve switches off the light and shuts the door but not entirely.

A blade of white crosses through the floor, across the bed, up until the window, and it paints shadows on the wall, along with the soft gleam coming from Tony’s chest.

It’s almost peaceful. Rogers stops to give one last glance, to lose himself in it, for a second, and the room smells of summer breeze and ocean’s tides. The night just spent feels like a dream.

“… _Steve_?”

It’s a murmur, a whisper: something nearly inaudible that makes Steve stop in his tracks and wonder if he heard it or dreamed it.

“You all right?”

Rogers opens the door completely and peers inside. From what he can see, Tony’s propped up on his elbows and staring at the door urgently. He flinches slightly, masks it quickly.

“Can…can you  _stay_?” he croaks. And Tony’s voice bends and swivels in ways Steve  _never_  thought he’d hear it do: he sounds almost apologetic. After all, Stark crumbles a little every day, and will continue on crumbling no matter how many midnight trips to the ocean they take.

But Rogers quickly responds to the darkness looming.

He is a man of action and a soldier and he  _does_ , not  _feel_  (or so he wishes). He _fights on the frontline_ , and he grins at sick little Stark and crawls into bed with him instantly, and, suddenly, the shower and the cleaning up and the clothes that smell of seaweed are of no importance. The sheets rustle, and Rogers cradles a dying child. Spiky bones and opaque skin, a dark, cancrenous circle where metal meets flesh.

Tony’s back presses against his chest, knee against knee, one hand resting on a hip, the other knotting with his. It’s a grip so tight it almost hurts. Both of them.

Steve kisses the back of Tony’s neck and feels a fragile ribcage that rises and falls, pained, against his own. For a while, the inhale of one follows the other’s exhale in a frantic race for balance. But then, seamlessly ( _naturally_ ), the breathing falls into rythm: and it is hard to understand which breaths belong to whom.

In that precise moment, they become one. In quietness. In darkness. In summer.

Rogers thinks Tony’s fallen asleep, when he suddenly moves and puts himself so that Steve’s chin is resting on the top of his head.

“It’s your birthday today.”

Steve blinks for a moment at what Stark’s just whispered.

He is, fundamentally, dumbfounded by two things. 

The first: Tony  _remembered_. It is a generally accepted rule amongst everybody who knows him that Tony Stark  _does not_ , under any circumstances, remember any date that could ever, in any way, be deemed “important” by anyone else. This applies to birthdays, anniversarys, bar mitvahs and holidays.

The second: he realizes he’s completely lost track of time ever since Hurricane Tony hit.  _Completely._ Up to the point that the man known to remember everything always to the point of exhasperation has forgotten completely about his own birthday.

“ _Yeah_.” he croaks, hoping that Stark doesn’t pick up on the general uneasiness.

He doesn’t: he’s much too tired.

“You’re an old man, Steve Rogers.”

Tony’s tired and drugged enough so that it’s almost hard to understand what he’s saying. Words jumbled in his brain come out a convulsing mess when tied together.

It’s hard for him to talk, and Steve notices this.

“I know. Now quiet down, you need to sleep.”

“Okay.” is the last thing he thinks he hears Tony say. 

Steve runs his palm across Tony’s bony hip, up his ribcage, until he meets the shoulder and brushes down, towards the hand. He rests his thumb against the wrist, where his hand and his arm are conjoined. He could count every bone if he wanted to.

He feels Tony’s pulse beat through skin, and it soothes him more than listening to him breathe.

*

Steve rolls around in bed and curses for the fifteenth time the fact that it’s the second time in a row he’s been abruptly woken up by someone dicking around in his kitchen. As per usual, he glances angriedly at the alarm clock.

It’s nearly two in the afternoon, and the bed’s empty.

He growls something concerning headaches and heavier painkillers before realizing he’s still wearing his damp clothes from the night before, and doesn’t know if he’s annoyed or doesn’t care. He settles on the latter as he gets up and finds Tony buried deep in the kitchen (the usual striped bedsheet wrapped around him) doing something that worryingly looks like either baking or cooking.

“Happy birthday.” he declares upon seeing him, waving around a batter-covered spatula.

“What— _what exactly are you doing_?”

“Ever heard of a birthday breakfast?”

Steve finds it hard to stifle a laugh. 

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re not funny, you’re sweet.”

He smiles at Tony who in the mean time has just slapped a more than generous (and borderline charred) batch of still fuming 

“Well then,  _I hope you like pancakes.”_

onto a plate, accompanied by butter, sugar, and a glass of milk.

Rogers sits down and cautiously stares at them (they don’t exactly look that edible), but there’s Stark sitting across from him, chin resting on his hands, puppy dog eyes ogling him lovingly, and, really, he can’t possibly say no to  _that_. So he takes a bite and grins at Tony and hopes the milk will be able to chase away the taste of burnt wood.

It doesn’t.

But Steve eats them anyway: and it’s the sheer  _effort_  that Tony put in waking up early enough to cook him a  _birthday breakfast_ despite the fact that every single little movement of his is probably the cause of excruciating pain that makes his heart clench in the most pleasant way possible.

“They’re… _good_.”

If there is one thing (apart from succesfully operating a touch screen cellphone and naming each member of the Jersey Shore cast off the top of his head) that Steve Rogers is absolutely  _horrid_  at, it is lying.

Stark arches an eyebrow and smirks.

“ _You_ , are the shittiest liar I’ve ever met.”

“I’m sorry.”

But Tony laughs, loud.

“I know I suck at cooking. Pepper’s told me a million times-“

“But I do appreciate the effort. I do.  _Really_.”

Almost instinctively, he grabs Tony’s thin hand from across the table. It feels cold.

“-and that’s all that matters, Steven. But really, I’m not going to storm out if you don’t like my pancakes. Hell,  _I_  don’t even like my cooking.”

“But what you did  _matters_ , Tony. So much.”

He adds an “I love you.” without even noticing. And Tony stares at him and doesn’t blink.

“They’re having fireworks this evening. We might be able to see them from your balcony.”

He slips into another subject quickly and delicately, shrugs off what scares him with such ease it’s almost maddening. Steve notices.

For now, he says nothing.

It’s in the mildly tense millisecond of silence that follows that he realizes that music’s been playing all along.

_Sweet Chariot_ , as played by Duke Ellington. One of his favorite songs.

A song he grew up listening to. A song that reminds him of his mother. 

He glances up at Tony who looks away, feigns indifference.

“ _You knew_.”

“Lucky guess - Stark grins and stands up with difficulty - shall we dance?”

And Steve can’t say no to that either, although he’s pretty sure neither of them really knows how to dance. But it’s okay.

They can learn as they go.

*

The first fierwork crackles and hisses and explodes, cascades of blues and whites burn across the sky.

They’re sitting side by side, feet dangling over the edge, on Steve’s fire escape, sipping a beer.

‘It’s pretty.” Tony croaks. And he smiles, but there’s bitterness that lines his lips.

Because he knows this is his last 4th of July. And it scares him.

There’s emptiness, suddenly, where he knows he should feel happy.

“It really is.” Steve replies.

A pinwheel of red screams above them, turns the sky on fire. It’s shaped like a star.

“I’m kind of waiting for a Captain America one to show up, actually.”

Stark takes a sip of his beer. It burns the back of his throat.

“Well, I hope they won’t have it.”

“You big shy  _teddy bear_.”

Steve laughs, nearly chokes on his drink.

“ _Teddy bear_?”

Tony nods. 

“ _Look at you_. You’re a fucking teddy bear made of steel and good intentions. I should’ve brought you to Build-A-Bear as a birthday present, not made you breakfast.”

“What’s Build-A-Bear?”

Tony stares blankly at the man in front of him before remembering he’s been trapped in ice for longer than he’s been alive.

“Just. A place for kids. They let you make your own stuffed animals. Y’know, the usual “fun for the whole family” bullshit.”

There’s the sound of firecrackers in the distance, the laughter of teens. 

Tony flinches suddenly as pain attachs his neck and his chest, and it’s hard for him to breathe.

He mutters a quiet curse, feels Steve’s soft palm against his cheek. He’s closed his eyes without noticing.

“Wanna go lie down a little?”

“No! No, I’m fine. I wanna stay here. I can breathe.”

He opens his eyes.

“I’m  _fine_ , Steve, really.”

He lets Rogers wrap an arm around his shoulders and draw him close. Tony lets himself stare at the buildings across from them, dimly lit windows. The bluish glow of a TV. The sound of a radio somewhere. The sound of joy and parties and bliss.

There’s families behind those glass windows. Maybe even happy ones.

“Pepper’s pregnant.”

For a second, the world stops in its tracks to listen, and is stricken still.

“ _What_?”

“You heard me, Steve. Pepper’s pregnant.”

Steve slumps back, and Tony sighs.

“Is it-“

“ _Of course it’s mine_ , you baboon.”

“How far in is she?”

“Four months.”

Rogers stops to think for a second about what to say next. 

“Well, congratulations.”

Tony scoffs and that’s when it becomes clear that there’s tears welling up behind his nearly opaque eyes. Tears of regret and sadness and guilt.

“Can…can you promise me a thing, Steve?”

His voice is shaking ever so slightly.

“ _Anything_.”

“Can…can you take care of the kid? Y’know…keep an eye on them as they grow up? Scare off bullies. Take them to baseball games or ballet shows or natural history museums or wherever they’ll want to go?”

“Tony, won’t  _you_  be doing all those things?”

And Stark lets out a deep, tearless sob that sounds as if every single little ounce of will to live in his body is being ripped from him.

He’s always, secretly, wanted to be a father.

Because he hoped in proving  _his_  father wrong, in proving  _everyone_  wrong: that damaged people can also be good people; that damaged people can function well enough to take care of another human being.

Because raising a kid was also maybe a little bit of a vanity project.

But, most importantly, because Tony Stark needed a family.

But the illness is taking  _that_  away, too, bit by bit, cell by cell, moment by moment. 

“Steve, I’ll be dead before the summer’s over.”

And they both know it’s true.

So Steve tightens his grip around Tony’s shoulder, gives him something to hold on to.

“I promise. I swear.”

He means it more than anything.

Tony’s whisper slips into the still air:

“ _Thank you_ , Steve.”

so light it could be made of stardust.


	17. In Memoriam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody - I'm sorry this comes so late. I've been struggling with pretty bad depression lately, so I'm finding it hard to keep myself motivated to do stuff.  
> But thanks to all of you - for the comments, the reads, the constant support.  
> You mean the world to me.
> 
> EDIT: HOLY SHIT I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE IT FUCKED UP AND POSTED TWICE! Man, I am so sorry.

Tony runs a single, webby, thin finger along the floor.

His fingertip tingles as it moves back and forth, back and forth. A light scraping where the nail touches the wood. Back and forth.

It relaxes him.

With the single eye that isn't pressed against the ground, he can watch as light dances along yellow skin pulled tight over throbbing blue veins. A fragile knuckle taps against the wood. The bone doesn't shatter, nor splinter, nor break.

He wonders how observing his own decay became his favorite passtime. Maybe it's always been his favorite thing, he just processed it differently.

He pulls the hand up, flexes every finger. It doesn't ease the pain and the pressure building up in the joints (but cracking them is a pleasant compulsion he just can't shake). Light traces a map he never asked to see.

Tony lies on the floor and decides moving takes far too much effort.

It bothers him to think this way, it really does. His ghost of a life badly spent is becoming an annoying  _leitmotif_  he is tired of listening to, a joke said once too often, old whiskey drunk too fast.

Again, he has lost track of hours and days. Steve's birthday (or so he thought) almost proved to be a valuable fixed point around which he could've based any other further observations but that disappeared, too, because his pain's flaired up to unimaginable heights and all has melted away into confusion and almost numbness. He swims in painkillers and nausea, drowns every night for a few hours in teeth-gritting nightmares of red and blood, breathing in Steve's sighs.

He is worse but not worse enough. No great collpase - not yet. No death's sweet kiss he doesn't want, at last, and will always secretly long for.

Not now, not  _yet_.

_Death turns a man into a philosopher, and a philosopher into a fool_ , he thinks. Even this thought makes him want to laugh.

How  _deep_  his pain has made him. How  _cynical_.

Stark closes his eyes and listens to the building surrounding him creak and moan under the weight of humanity. If he could hear them under the neverending roar of cars, he'd even listen to the same birds that wake him up each morning at five AM (or, better, greet him to another day, as he stares at the ceiling and listens to pain gnaw away at his cells).

And if he had the chance to, he knows this, he could draw the millions of tiny cracks in Rogers' bedroom ceiling without even looking at them. Without a reference. In a heartbeat.

He has, in the days spent floating from one room to the next, mapped out every crevice of this tiny apartment and of Rogers' life and habits.

He knows where the sugar is, where the salt is, where bread is kept.

He knows that every morning at eight AM sharp the neighbor walks his horribly obnoxious chihuahua (it makes quite a racket every time), that mail comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that Steve buys his food at a tiny Pakistani-run shop right on the corner and that, once a week, he treats himself to a small bottle of chocolate milk (a detail that's gotten Tony gushing more than once).

He knows that on the right hand, bottom shelf of Steve's living room library go the crime novels, right above them go the cookbooks (and Steve has a penchant for making Asian food Stark had no idea whatsoever about), to the left are the classics (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, a couple of Russian tomes), and next to them comes the only book about World War Two Rogers ever let himself keep. A pile of old sketchbooks (some dating as far back as 1935) clutters most of the top left shelf. It turns out S.H.I.E.L.D. (and Howard, but Tony doesn't have to know that) kept almost all of them safe, intact, and far from any harm.

A picture with no frame rests against them. It's a black and white snapshot taken when everything was still supposed to have gone differently and Rogers wasn't supposed to become an alien trying to survive the 21st century, a relic, a living legend. When there was no talk of eternity spent trapped in ice, just tales of the Star Spangled Man.

Tony's looked at this picture, over and over. He's glared at it, stared at it, hated it.

Two men and a woman. The only blonde is Steve, who's grinning at the camera.

The other two: one Peggy Carter. One  _Howard Stark_.

Tony's always hated ghosts. They're uncomfortable, they're painful, they're heavy to carry.

Now more than ever, when he's on the verge of becoming one. And knowing that Howard was happy, once,  _without him_ , when Steve was still tangible and real and there, makes his heart ache with a mix of jealousy and slight disgust: there are far too many sleepless nights he has spent wondering if falling in love with Steve Rogers is, along with a massive ego and a brilliant mind, something that gets passed down from generation to generation in the Stark family. But he's never really given himself the time to properly dwell on it, and knows that if he did it would probably drive him even more out of his mind than he already is.

So, for now, he lies down on cool floorboards wrapped in bedsheets, listening to worlds live and breathe around him. Worlds he will never be part of. Worlds he once was a fundamental gear of, a vital part, a perfectly working cog.

All of his metaphors are machines. All of his machines are metaphors.

A memory that whizzes in his brain.

An iron suit to protect him from guilt.

All a dream, a lie, a trick. A fragile shield.

Especially that  _one tiny invention_ , ticking away at his life, encased deep within him, wires mixing with veins.

He will always be fascinated by himself, the way he is never able to distinguish blood from electricity.

Tony runs a fragile knuckle along the floor, taps it against it every once and again. His head hurts, and doing so certainly doesn't ease the pain.

It's then that he hears distant footsteps, the housedoor opening, closing (he knows he should get up or at least say something but there's not enough blood pumping through his muscles, not enough oxygen reaching his brain, and maybe his tongue has turned to ash, vocal cords pulverized), more footsteps (he loves listening to all of them  _live_ , it gives him sweet satisfaction and hope of them making it through, somehow, leaving him in the rubble but nothing  _ever_  dies, all is transformed) and stopping, when Steve reaches the living room, sees the empty couch. 

It takes him a minute to notice Tony slumped on the floor. The footsteps quicken just a bit, nervously. He crouches down next to Tony.

Places a single hand against his back, searches for lack of movement. There is slight breathing.

And Tony dips into the touch, melts inside of it just a little.

"I'm not  _dead_ , don't worry."

It turns out his vocal cords exist after all.

"I didn't think you were dead." Steve lies.

"Besides, I'm not  _that_  selfish _._ I would  _never_  have you come home and find me dead."

Rogers cracks a smile as he helps Tony pull himself up and sit against the couch. He looks like a rag doll with no owner.

"What were you doing down there anyway?" Steve asks. He unscrews the brown cap of a tiny plastic bottle decorated with happy little cartoon cows before taking a sip.

"Listening."

"Listening? To what?"

"The eternity of all things around me."

Steve's furrowed brow makes Tony burts out laughing.

"I'm just kidding. Birds, and cars. You know. The  _Thing_ -"

"You mean Carl's dog?"

"Yeah. The Thing."

Steve smirks at him and turns to go and throw away the empty chocolate milk bottle. He finds himself face to face with his bookshelf instead. 

Eye to eye with Peggy ( _sharp blow to the head_ ) and Howard ( _sharp blow to the back_ ). Both are touchy subjects - always have been, always will. 

Tony notices him looking at the picture, tries to save them both from a sticky situation.

"Yes, that's a  _bookshelf_ , Cap."

But Steve stares at long lost friends,  _soldier girl and mad little inventor boy_. And the weight of his age, for a second, crushes him to pieces.

"I haven't aged a day."

He sounds guilty.

"That's because you're a supersoldier. Didn't Hermann's-"

"-- _Erskine_ , Tony."

"Yeah, Erskine. Didn't his serum do that to you?"

"They're both  _dead."_

Steve flips around and glares at Tony and for a moment,  _but just a moment_ , realizes he is the spit copy of his father, down to how his lips quiver when he smirks.

" _Jesus_ , you look so much like Howard." sounds like an unnecessary bullet that somehow, unfortunately, hits its target.

Steve's always been bad with guns, and Tony's smile falls. The mask flies up.

"I am  _nothing_  like him." sticks to the roof of his mouth and tastes like cyanide.

"I didn't mean it as insulting-"

" _No._ I am nothing. Like. Him."

Steve plays around with the bottle, wondering whether he should say something or not. Shut up, leave Tony and his Daddy issues alone or speak up, defent his friend's memory. 

"You know, he wasn't  _that_ bad."

Stark nods, condescending. He hates it when they say that. He hates it when they say he was  _good_ , when they say his pain  _doesn't count_ , when they say he's  _wrong_ for hating him because he did  _so fucking much_ for his country.

"You know what Howard had?"

Steve sighs, rolls his eyes.

"God, you can't even call him  _dad_."

"Because he  _wasn't_  my dad."

His jaw clenches.

"But, lucky for him, he had an  _idea_ to keep him as far away from his family as  _possible_. And he  _believed_  in that idea, Steve. He  _obsessed_ over it."

"Let me  _guess_ , that idea was  _me_."

"Look at  _that_ , not  _all_  blondes are stupid."

They're arguing, like hundreds of thousands of times before. But this feels different against their skin. This is more aggressive, more intimate. This isn't about battle strategies or alcoholism, illnesses kept secret and flying headfirst into danger.

This is about the part of himself Tony wishes he could hide and lock away forever and never have to think about again. A wish that cannot be granted.

This is about  _Tony_ , and so neither of them dare yell.

"He  _adored you_. Spent all of his life  _looking for you, talking about you, saying how_ magnificent  _you were. This_ -"

"This? What this?"

"What...what _ever_ we have. It's incest. It's fucking  _incest_."

Steve raises his hands, defeat and bewilderment, words dying in his throat.

"-- _Incest_?  _Really_?"

"Yes, Cap. INCEST. You know what you were, to Howard? The perfect, fucking, son. The ultimate weapon, the man that cannot be  _broken_. The smart, funny, handsome, intelligent,  _succesful_ Steve Rogers from Brooklyn. A dream of a new era. You were the fucking  _future_ , and boy, did Howard  _love_  the future. Howard was  _so, damn, in love with you_."

Rogers shakes his head.

"You're being ridiculous."

Stark scoffs.

"Yes, Steve Rogers, the overachieving older brother. Staright A's in a math test? Oh, I'm sorry, Dad can't reward you with ice cream right now because _it could've been an A+_ ,  _because something moved in the Arctic, because they found a fucking blue cube in the middle of the ocean, because maybe, just, fucking, maybe he's on the brink of finding the great Captain America_! He was in love with you or with the idea of you or with whatever you  _fucking represented_ , he was  _infatuated_ and you were God and I was a lowly mortal and he never had time for us, for me, for my mother. For  _anyone_  that wasn't Stark Industries or  _the Captain_. And I'm  _really sorry_  that I'm _nothing_  like him."

"You know  _what_ , Tony? Last time I checked, Howard wasn't the  _only one_  who left his child and the woman he loved  _in favor of me_."

The moment he says this, he can see Tony's gaze crumble under guilt that has suddenly flooded inside of him. Tony tries to talk back, but he can't. An unborn child calls his name in a voice he'll never know.

He looks down abruptly and squeezes his eyes shut, furrows his brow, bites his knuckles.

"You know  _exactly_  why I  _can't be with Pepper right now._ "

His voice is low and quiet and rage filled.

Steve thinks he should apologize. But would it be worth it? He tries to speak the words, and nearly starts to. He gets as far as opening his mouth to speak.

"No, Rogers. I don't want to talk to you right now." 

Stark's slipped back inside the illness, where it's warm, where it's deadly, where he can't be harmed by words he doesn't want to hear.

Death is a protective shield, just like any other thing.

*

Tony has a habit of waking up late at night, and crouch next to a window to think. It's usually the living room window. Sometimes it's even the bedroom window.

But, this time, Steve finds Tony standing in front of the damned bookcase, holding the picture that started it all.

"Hey?" he tentatively asks. He and Tony haven't spoken yet, ever since fighting.

Tony seems startled, in the quietness and darkness.

"Hey.  _Hey_."

He slips the snapshot back onto the shelf, hopes Steve didn't notice. He did.

"Old ghosts?"

"I guess I should start letting them go. It's not healthy to hold on for too long."

He grins his usual bitter grin. The tension melts away.

A little.

"You want a painkiller?" Steve asks. Right now, even standing up seems painful for Tony.

"I'd like one of those, yeah."

Tony's sitting at the kitchen table a few moments later, an empty glass in his hand. Stark tapping against it: he can never seem to keep his hands still. Especially when he's nervous.

"She was - he clears his throat - she was pretty, you know?"

"Who was?"

"Peggy."

Out of the corner of his eye, he can spot Steve growing tense.

"Tell me more about her."

"About Margaret? Why?"

Tony shrugs.

"I guess I want to know what I'm up against."

"First you call this incest then you ask me how to live up to my ex girlfriend?"

"What can I say? I'm a changeable guy."

Steve walks over, wraps Tony in his arms: Stark's head against his chest, Tony grabs onto his arms and draws him as close as he can.

"She was... - Rogers starts playing with his hair, talking quietly - she was a lot like you. Physically."

"I know, my boobs are great."

Rogers tries not to laugh. Tony might be in excruciating pain and they might've just fought, but he still has a sense of humor.

"I mean feisty and pocket sized and with dark hair and eyes, you idiot. And she was smart. She knew how to fight for something. And she knew how to stand her ground."

He lets out a tiny, indefinite sigh.

"She was beautiful. Just like you."

Tony gives him a little smile, grabs his hand and holds it.

"You miss her, don't you?"

"Every day."

"Do you know if she's still alive?" Tony asks.

Quietness, as Steve bites his lip and frowns.

"I doubt it, Tony. She'd be over ninety years old."

"You'd be surprised."

"What would be the point, even if she was alive? She'd be back in the UK. She wouldn't even  _remember me_."

"But  _you_ 'd remember her."

"That doesn't count. - Steve lets go of Stark and takes a step back - Not for me, at least."

"But-"

"No. No, Tony. You said it too, didn't you? You just did.  _It's not healthy to hold on_. She's  _there._ She's in my past. And, trust me, that's for the best."

"But what if she's cooped up in some crappy retirement home still dreaming about her soldier boyfriend? What if she's  _waiting_?"

"What if she's  _dead_? What if it turns out she got married and her husband was a drunk and  _killed her_?"

Tony's eyes dart frantically around the room, across Steve's face. He gasps for air and words.

"Tony. Please.  _No_. I want to remember her how she is. How she was. And, besides, if we met now, it would be so much worse. I'd still be beautiful and she'd be..."

"Old?"

"Yeah. She's from  _another time_."

Steve grabs the glass and puts it into the sink. The argument's over, and he needs to go back to sleep. Escape the day's tension that has just culminated, again.

"One last thing. Steve?"

"Sure. What is it?"

"Did you guys, y'know, ever dance? Wasn't that what people did in the forties?"

Oh, that question hits close to home.

"No, we didn't. There wasn't any time."

Stark nods, and seems to think.

"Why, Tony?"

"Nothing - he shakes his head - just  _food for thought_."

And grins.


	18. Starry Tales

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Tony says this late one night (they’ve nearly become nocturnal beings, sleeping during the day if they can manage - but all great confessions, all moments of truth and quiet promises… _those_ come at night. The important things are gestated throughout excruciatingly warm hours and given birth to only when the temperature cools off, when nighttime soothes old wounds and opens even older ones) as he leans his ever-scorching forehead against the edge of the toilet.

He’s just spent the last twenty minutes vomiting.

Steve’s crouched down next to him and he moves sweaty hair out of his eyes, runs fingers along Tony’s cheek and cheekbone.

“You’ve made it this far, tiger.”

Stark smiles at him, weary.

“It doesn’t matter.”

His tongue feels thick and his throat hurts. He suspects it’s dehydration, knows he should get something to drink.

But the kitchen is so far, and he’s so  _tired_ , and asking Steve for the millionth time feels humiliating. And he’s pretty certain he’ll just puke it all up.

He’s on the brink of crying. Literally. He is so desperately  _sick_  he cannot even begin to imagine asking for a simple glass of water and this,  _this_  is the true defeat and as short as his life is going to be, it still feels as if he’s got miles to go. He’s losing energy every day, devoured by pain and symptoms of an illness he can’t even fight.

His skin hurts where Steve touches it, he can’t focus well on anything. He wishes he could be hugged. Or drugged into oblivion. Or both.

But once again, he is too tired to exist.

“It matters to me.” Steve whispers, quiet.

Tony says nothing. Deep down, deep inside of him, he can feel his innards scream, burning to ash.

Ash, ash, charred meat and bone.

A tongue reduced to ash and now this metaphor, and it is always  _ash_.  _It is always ash_. He is a man made of ash, ashy eyes, ashy skin. Although metal never turns to ash when you burn it (or does it?).

He should wait and see, one day, maybe change his will.

_His will_ : and his legacy will become someone else’s. Pepper’s, hopefully, if lawyers don’t put their claws on it first. 

And then his child’s. An unborn baby girl, perhaps? A woman running Stark Industries, after such a string of men.

He suddenly realizes that, if he opens his mouth, he will vomit again. Even breathing is making his stomach rebel against him. 

If he had the courage, he would look at his knuckles and see them dried out and flaky, he would look at his nails and see them broken and yellow. And he could look at his arms and chest and neck, and see them laced with black veins.

He could, but it would mean never being able to get back up onto his feet: his body somehow still holds on. There’s muscles he can still attain energy from. He knows he’s down to that: to burning muscular flesh in a last-ditch attempt to keep the machine running. It’s nothing much, but it’s something. And it’s still amazing because even muscles can’t hold on that long, there is  _some kind of power source_ that keeps him going.

If he were stupid and infantile and naive, he would say it was the power of love. But  _love alone_  doesn’t keep a man going for almost a year even though everything says he is doomed for the Pits. No, there must be something else.

He will always be infinitely suicidal and yet completely enamoured with life. And he can maybe accept that.

But not right now, curled up on a bathroom floor with his best friend he’s still too scared to call a lover doing all he asks for, and more, and Steve would  _kill_  for Tony, and he’d bring him the stars and moon if he could. 

If he could, he’d purge his blood of any trace of poison. He’d kiss Tony’s blue lips and red eyes and brittle bones all better.

But he  _can’t_.

Rogers thinks of the old woman on the train, and how she was right, how it’s tedious and horrible and devastating because first they were  _something_  and then a thing broke inside of them and they became something  _else_  that is still them but watered down a thousand times, a ghost of a ghost of a cadaver.

“Wanna try and stand up?”

Tony scoffs at his words, and it’s bitter and unamused.

“I don’t think I can manage it.”

His stomach screams at his words and at his throat flexing to speak, and it is painful and horrible and he can feel every cell inside him  _claw at him and scream_  in ways it shouldn’t, ever, not in someone healthy.

But he  _isn’t_  healthy.

For a few minutes, there’s just the sound of him heaving.

And it’s the last straw.

He got drunk because he  _didn’t want to die_.

He took pills  _because he didn’t want to die_.

He wanted to kill himself  _because he didn’t want to die_ and nothing worked, nothing helped, nothing chased the ghost away. From his death will come a child, and from his death came the love Steve feels for him and he feels for Steve. But there is no epiphany and no solution and no  _end_  and he is  _dying_  and he  _does not want to_.

His nails scrape against porcelain as he screeches as he vomits, out of frustration, out of being so aware of his surroundings. He pounds against the floor with his fists and Steve does nothing to stop him. He just furrows his brow and looks on, concerned, before wetting a washcloth with cold water and standing by.

“Fuck. FUCK. FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK FUCK!”

Tony throws his head back. He gasps for air, his mouth tastes bitter, so bitter. There is nothing left to vomit and yet his body insist on refusing everything he _imagines_  putting in it which, right now, isn’t much. He’d  _kill_ to be able to down just a glass of water.

“Hey.” 

Steve rubs the back of Stark’s neck as he lets himself fall against him, both sitting on the floor, Steve’s back pressed against the wall and Tony’s pressed against his chest. He runs the washcloth over Stark’s forehead and face, and Tony lets him even though it brings little comfort.

“It’s okay, Tony.”

“It isn’t.”

“Does that matter? It’s okay. Right now, because I’m telling you this. It’s okay.” and Steve kisses his cheek, rocks him back and forth. Tony feels tiny, in his arms, fragile, precious.

A delicate machine made of ivory and gold and pearls, a China doll statue, an ancient Arabic book of mysteries fashioned from silver and rose petals.

Steve fears he could split his skin if he squeezes him too tight.

“Wanna try and eat something?”

Tony knows he should. The hunger pangs are too much. His energy levels are too low. He might (and he probably  _will_ ) vomit it all up, but it’s always worth a try.

“Something small.” he croaks. “Very small.”

“Plain toast?”

Tony shrugs. 

“Can you make it to the kitchen, or-“

“I can try.” which is exactly when his stomach screeches, almost to discourage him. Tony shuts his eyes and swallows the nausea down and wonders how it’s physically possible for him to feel both hot and cold. He shudders and presses harder against Steve, curls up in himself.

“Is it a problem if you, y’know…”

“Bring it here?”

Tony nods. Eating in the bathroom is a disgusting thing to do, and he knows this, but he cannot possibly imagine moving. Not right now.

Not like this.

“Okay. Just give me a second.”

And Steve moves awkwardly, shuffles out of the room. Tony lets his back hit the wall with an unpleasant-sounding smack and doesn’t care if it hurts even more, he needs to concentrate on swallowing because it’s such a damn horrible thing to do right now. He shuts his eyes for a second and the next thing he knows is Steve shaking him lightly, a plate in one hand, a kind smile on his lips.

Tony blinks a few times.

“You fell asleep.” is all that Steve says, ever so softly, before handing Tony his food.

“How long?”

“Just a few minutes.”

Steve sits on the edge of the bathtub while Stark, slowly but surely, starts munching on the bread, following an extremely precise routine he’s found out manages to keep his mind off the nausea for a while: he rips the bread (two slices, no butter) to tiny squares, places them in rows of four on his plate. He usually manages to make three of them, before starting to eat from the bottom left piece and, slowly but surely, making his way up.

It’s borderline obsessive (like so much in his life) but, at least, it gives him stability. 

Stark shuts his eyes (the light makes everything much more difficult) and breathes through his nose as he chews, hopes to quench his stomach long enough to eat at least  _something_. 

He manages to eat an entire row and a half of squares before the nausea hits again, roaring, and he drops his plate as he presses a hand to his mouth and clenches the other one in a fist.

He  _isn’t_ going to heave. He  _isn’t. He isn’t_.

He’s not giving in again. He’s keeping that goddamn food where it goddamn  _belongs_. He will. He’s gonna do it.

He doesn’t care if he’ll have to spend the entire night curled up on the floor. He’s gonna stop himself from vomiting. 

He feels familiar arms circle around him again, as nausea gets substituted by a low rumbling and a gut-deep throb. But he fights it back, and feels Steve’s lips against his mouth he’s sure tastes sour. The kiss is a quick one, a rare one, a blessed one. A balm, for lack of a better word. A painkiller. A reassurance.

Tony’s world condenses itself in that break from madness and pain.

“I’m sorry about the plate.” he mutters, but Steve silences him with a single finger pressed to the lips.

“No. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

And it never has.

Tony smiles back at him, bites the finger but doesn’t hurt, and yet Steve pulls his hand away nonetheless, and it’s more surprise than anything else. Stark lets his body slump to the side, and he’s lying on the floor listening to his organs breathe.

“How…about, we move you to the living room?”

“I don’t think I can make it.”

“Can, or  _want_?”

It’s Steve set on neverending optimism mode, and this is enough to annoy Tony just a little. He hates being forced into things. And getting up against his will is one of them, but he’s been in the mood for arguing less and less. He just rolls with things and waits for misfortune to rain on his head.

“I—oh, fuck it. Just. Jesus. Help me up, you asshole.”

“ _That’s the spirit_.”

Steve slips an arm around Tony and helps him to his feet. Stark hisses as he stands up, knees give out for a second. His head spins, his stomach withers, he thinks it would be pitiful to puke now after all of his hard work. 

They manage to make it nearly up to the couch until Tony lets himself fall onto the floor, and it’s so hot he could scream. They both could, the heat is beyond unbearable this summer. 

“Do you need anything?” Steve asks, although he already knows the answer.

“A painkiller and my cigarettes.”

“You’ll feel even sicker if you smoke.”

Stark glares at him. “Then can I at least have my pill, Mister  _Red Cross_?”

“ _Red Cross_? Really? Is that the best you can come up with?” Steve giggles as he hands Tony his pill and a glass filled with as little water as he can, to avoid worsening his already painful stomach ache.

“Gimme a break, I’m dying over here.” which could be read in more ways than one, and all are definitely unpleasant.

Steve’s smile turns bitter, suddenly. He doesn’t answer, and Tony never expected him to.

“Anyway, are you planning on going back to bed?”

Rogers frowns: Tony’s probably thinking of doing something  _insane_ , which will definitely prove disastrous since he hasn’t been able to really eat for the last three days, since he can hardly stand up on his own, and since he’s definitely exhausted.

But no matter: Stark’s used to running on no food and even less sleep. It’s the constant nausea and extreme fatigue that’s new, but he’s a fast-adapting beast.

More or less.

And that is yet again a manifestation of the great contradiction that is Tony Stark: curled up on a floor unable to move one moment, manic and ready to take on the world the next.

“Does your house have an accessible roof?”

Steve starts rubbing his temples with his index fingers. The migraine looms.

“Hey, c’mon. Don’t do that, you haven’t even heard my idea.”

“I don’t  _want to_.”

“ _Yes you dooo_.”

Steve opens his eyes and Tony bats his eyelashes at him, lips pursed.

“Make a terminal patient happy.”

“Will you just  _stop_  with the jokes?”

“If  _I_ can’t laugh about this, nobody can.”

Rogers decides not to argue any further, nor inquire. He might as well listen to whatever Tony has in mind: he’s going to refuse anyway. 

“I know what you’re thinking and I know you’re thinking that you’re gonna say no, but last time I had a bad idea you actually did run with it.”

“It was a once in a lifetime thing.”

“ _Of course it was._ Anyway, does this place have an accessible roof?”

Steve nods. Tony smirks.

“Wanna go up there?”

*

“Told ya you’d say yes.”

“I was expecting something horribly harmful, like midnight bunjee jumping.”

Tony laughs, raspy voice echoing.

“I’ll warn you when I come up with an idea that’s  _that_  bad. Although it does sound tempting.”

Steve’s frown only adds to the hilarity. Tony grabs him, ruffles his hair. Steve tries to break free but Tony doesn’t let go: they roll about for a few moments, wrestling, until something pulls in Stark’s back and he yelps, Steve on top of him.

They both grin at eachother, lying on a sheet, on a roof, the city throbbing below them, lights and lives and hopes.

“ _Now_ , if this were an indie romcom, we’d kiss right about now and there would be horrible pretentious rock music playing in the background—Do you even know what a romcom  _is_?”

And even though it’s all horribly, disgustingly, unbearably romantic, Steve does just that, and presses his lips to Tony’s. 

Tony indulges in these rarely-given kisses (because it’s one thing if it’s a kiss on the shoulder or on the temple or on the cheek, and it’s another if it’s on the lips: the latter is intimate, precious,  _theirs_ , a promise laced around skin and on breathing patterns) that never equal the first one, and probably never will. He indulges in them and drinks them in and makes them his. Up to a certain point, because even his damaged shell is a hard one to crack.

“Now get off of me, I want to look at the sky.” 

Which incidentally has little to no stars: it’s the price you have to pay if you want to live in a big city. But it’s still there, velveteen blanket, and they can make up stars if they want to. 

A few lucky ones still twinkle, and they’re beautiful although sparse. Steve lies down next to Tony with his arms folded behind his head. He sighs without sadness.

“They’re pretty.” Tony whispers, eyes so wide they almost seem alive again, the gray almost seems turned back to black. 

“There aren’t so many.”

“But it doesn’t matter, does it? There’s a few, and they’re there, and they’re  _pretty_. And that’s all that counts.”

Tony licks his lips, eyes moving across the space above them, counting them one by one. He used to know their names but he’s forgetting more and more each day. It pains him. And he hasn’t told anyone about it yet. So they don’t talk for a while, and Stark creeps up against Steve. Rogers notices and pulls him close. They cuddle quietly and listen to the nothingness below them that is full of houses, streets of concrete, cars. Old cars, new cars, borrowed cars, stolen cars.

Tony breathes in deeply and hopes the oxygen will calm his rotten, poisoned gut for at least a second. Everything has become a painkiller, mere moments of bliss are used to fight against this illness that leaves no real time to breathe. He presses his face against Steve’s chest, swallows even though it brings yet another wave of nausea.

Steve looks at Tony smiling and nearly thinks he could die, too, along with him. Because there is such  _joy_  in him right now, in this small smile Rogers thinks Stark isn’t even aware of doing as he hides against his shirt.

“You’re pretty.” he whispers without really thinking. He’s still somehow scared of saying it (even the kisses he gives make him nervous), and maybe he always will be. But he loves Tony. And, like the stars they can’t see but are there and are shining, that’s all that matters.

“If you like skeletons and rotting flesh.”

“No, I’m serious. Tony. You’re still pretty when you smile.”

Stark doesn’t look at him but tightens his grip on his shirt and smiles wider. 

“ _Only_  when I smile?”

“Oh,  _shush_.”

Stark pulls himself out of the hug and looks at Steve, who’s all blue eyes and blond hair and quiet, shy smiles. The kid from Brooklyn sparkles in his eyes hidden well behind chemicals but always showing, just a little.

He realizes his father was right: Steve Rogers is a drug and the sweetest one possible, and it’s all in the way he is a mystery ready to be unraveled, trapped between two eras, so sweet he trickles inside of you and takes hold of your mind and never lets go.

This is a crush and this is love and it is co-dependance and it is madness brought on by fever and illness, but it is also bliss, freedom.

Tony nearly says I love you. And he could, really, if he wanted to.

But he isn’t ready. He’s scared to tie Steve to him  _definitely_ : he wants to give his friend a last chance of realizing this madness, of understanding that what will come from this will be nothing but heartbreak. He wants to give Steve a last chance to run away, and he wants to revel in the fact he never will.

“I love you.” Steve says, and means it more than everything. He nuzzles against Tony’s hair and distracts him from his thoughts.

“ _No_ , Steve.”

“Yes. Say you love me too?”

And the sadness falls as easily as it had been chased away. He cannot do this - Tony cannot do this. Not now. Not yet.

He  _will_ , some day. He swears this to himself. When he knows he will be ready.

“ _Tony_?”

He snaps out of staring at the emptiness in front of him. He runs a solitary finger along Steve’s lips, and the way his skin is mapped is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“I can’t. I’ll break your heart.”

“It doesn’t  _matter_ , it doesn’t  _matter,_ it doesn’t  _matter_ , you idiot.”

“It does.”

“No, you’re the star I won’t be able to see.”

Tony stares at him and doesn’t blink.

“… _What_?”

“There but not there and I’ll  _remember_. Even though I won’t see you.”

Stark listens to Steve and then smiles sadly and sweetly.

“You’re  _horrible_  at poetry, Steve.”

“Maybe a broken heart will make me better at it.”

Death, unspoken, lingers between them. He knots his fingers with Tony’s and the love so intoxicating pours out of every inch of his body, in sweat, in breathing, in tears that have not yet been spilled and will be.

“But I’m not going anywhere.”

He pulls Tony close, holds him tight.

“You’re stuck with me ‘till the end, Tony.”

And Stark breathes Steve in, and breathes the stars in, breathes it all in and realizes how  _lucky_  he is to have Rogers. How horribly guilty he feels to have him.

Nausea hurts his innards, and stars shine quietly above.

A romcom in the making.


	19. Memento Mori

He forgets about it.

Sometimes.

When the air is fresh and the ground smells of dust and he’s almost caught sketching him but manages to hide the paper just in time.

He forgets about it.

Whenever he makes a snarky remark. Whenever they sit on the fire escape drinking the occasional beer (if his stomach can handle it), whenever he watches him sleep, whenever he can  _ignore_ , for once, ignore it all ignore the sunken eyes the swollen eyes the shaking hands the sharp bones nearly piercing through his skin.

Whenever he can ignore all those things, whenever he can shut his eyes and pretend they’ll make it through.

He forgets.

*

He comes home from a run and finds the apartment empty.

The rooms echo with the tangy sweet smell of sweat but there is no one there.

Steve doesn’t give in to panic - not immediately, at least. First, he breathes through his nose a few times and clears his mind, because Tony can’t have gone too far. 

Because the worst thought possible has made its way into his brain, but he doesn’t even want to entertain the possiblity (dying animals choose to wander away from the pack) so he pushes it aside, for now.

Rogers glances around the empty living room and feels nervousness more than anything, more than real fear, more than real panic - but they’re already nesting in the back of his head, ready to pounce. He wills himself to stop and think.

Because Tony’s slipped out to somewhere, and he doesn’t know how or why.

Silence drizzels on the windows in the absence of rain. Steve licks his lips, rubs his eyes with the tip of his fingers.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Stark.” he hisses between his teeth. Does he actually think so?

Of course he does, down to every last word.

He’s fallen in love with a problem too complicated to solve.

*

Feet drooping over the edge, he wonders how fast it would take for his body to hit the ground.

Does he want to try?

He doesn’t, not for once. But he needed fresh air and he needed a breath and although it’s day and there’s no stars, the rooftop always gives him clarity.

Tony sighs and covers himself better with a sheet he knows (hopes?) will always smell of him, just a little. He wants to give something tangible to Steve, apart from a kid that’ll remind everyone too much of him and memories of evenings spent curing hopeless fevers. He rests his head in the palm of his hands: he’s up in the open because he needs to calm his mind, falling asleep caused him to slip into nightmares he didn’t even ask for, dark throbbing intrusive thoughts that smelled of blood, people he loved dying and dirty grimy caves, and ended with a moment of bliss, metal wings spread.

He dreamt of touching clouds, and drinking the sunlight in.

He thinks, for a brief fleeting second, about Steve’s worry upon finding an empty house. But he’d been the one to insist Rogers go out: Tony needed time on his own, he needed to curl up in the dark of the soldier’s closet and press his face against shirts, breathe in a scent that was both cleanliness and Steve’s delicate taste of sugar, and dust, and autumn leaves, and he needed to stand under a bright blue sky and stare at the city, unmerciful, and long for a second to be swallowed whole by it.

He knows he will in the ashes spread on the day he will be nothing at all and confined in memory. So he wiggles his toes and watches as both of his slippers fly down, regrets letting them fall soon after.

Oh, but it feels so worthless, and quiet. Detached.

He shuts his eyes for a second and gives himself up to his body like so many times before because he familiar routine of decay rings in his ears like a well known symphony, and tastes of burnt wood and uncomfortable secrets, and he is more than okay with that although he sometimes wishes he wasn't and sometimes it's true, sometimes he lies awake in bed at night or curls up on a bathroom floor and wishes he didn't have to go through with the revoltingly exhausting process that is dying.

But he might as well accept it. My God, he never will.

Tony laughs at himself just a little: it's a quiet noise made just for himself and maybe the few pigeons keeping him company. He giggles just a little and wonders what Pepper will call their child.

He hopes it won't be Anthony as he stands up and walks down the stairs back into the building.

He _prays_  it won't be that.

*

Steve curses under his breath because Tony isn't in the kitchen, he isn't in the living room, or on the couch, or in the bed and he isn't under the table (he's found him curled up in there more than once) and this feels just like losing a puppy, or breaking a glass vase after your mother told you not to.

It's not living up to expectations, and responsibilities and it feels unnerving to say the least (Steve doesn't know for a moment wether he cares more about his ego or about Tony, which is stupid, which he feels guilty about) so he sits down on the couch and buries his face in his hands. He tries to steady his breathing.

If he was actually there, he'd punch the man uncoscious. 

"Yeah. Right. Jesus-"

Steve runs a hand over his face and tries to rub the worry away. He obviously fails.

So he stands up, goes into the bedroom, switches the light on again, switches it off, and on, and off, and on, until he glances towards the closet.

And notices that the door is slightly ajar.

That it shuts, _on its own_ , with a far too soft _clunk_.

*

"Mind if I join you?"

Tony fights against a shirt wrapped around his head to find light (flooding) tearing through his retinas.

A dark silhouette he supposes is Steve is blocking most of it, though, standing in front of the closet he's hiding in.

"Steve. Hey." 

Rogers takes this as a yes, and he squeezes himself inside, pushing out some cardboard boxes. 

"You do this often?" he asks.

Tony crawls forward and places his head on Rogers' chest for no reason at all aside from the need for warmth and human contact, a heartbeat to share just with one.

"Mostly when you're asleep. Or out shopping."

Steve sighs, ironic and thoughtful, and runs a hand through Tony's hair, thinning and grey and unhealthy, dry. He secretly fears the day it will start falling out.

"Is it cozy?"

"Very. But I was on the roof up to a half hour before you came back." He pauses to lick his lips. "I lost my slippers, though."

"Jesus, I think I'll have to kick you out for it."

Stark sticks his tongue out.

"Don't you _dare_ , or once I'm gone I'll haunt the shit out of ya."

"You wouldn't _dare_."

"Oh, I'll stand out of your bedroom window for the rest of forever and stare at you. Just stare the fuck out of you."

He points a finger at Steve.

"You wait and _see_."

The smile that follows is interrupted by a fit of coughing, and Steve holds Tony through the spasms as he buries his mouth in his hand, eyes squeezed shut and a curse ready to tumble through clenched lips.

He says he's fine even before Rogers asks and it takes him more than a few second to calm his breathing and subside the pain of air burning through a raw throat. And even after that, he's quiet for a few more.

Thinking about things he better shouldn't, but he can't help it.

"You know who I've been thinking about a lot?" he finally whispers. He sounds _desperate_ , and oh so very suddenly (although there's always sadness in his voice). This scares Steve.

"Your... _dad_?" the soldier hesitates to ask, maybe even dreading the answer.

Which, incidentally, is a much worser blow.

"No. God, no." Tony glares at him, shakes his head. " _Coulson_."

Steve's expression falls, his face goes blank. There is no emotion: except the eyes, the eyes, those brilliant eyes. They seem eternal, suddenly. Neverending loss.

"And how it isn't _fair_."

Steve says nothing: sometimes talking takes up too much time, and oxygen. And even Tony knows this, which is why he goes on on his own, waits for no reply nor acknowledgement.

"How it wasn't fair when it happened. How it isn't fair _now_. That he's dead. He was the biggest hero of us all and he's dead, he _died_ , Steve, he was there a moment and then he wasn't and it's not _fair._ "

Now, now is one of those breaths in which his brain will not let him accept it. In which he doesn't want to go. 

Because he has something to _lose_. Something he cannot let go of.

"And it isn't _right_ , God. It isn't right that I. That I have to _go_. Right now."

He glances to Steve who wishes his eyes were made of stone and granite and were unbreakable.

"When I've just started to unravel you. Because I want to never stop."

The light hits him in ways that, suddenly, show every single gleaming vein of poison. The jugular on his neck, black snake that makes its path towards face and mouth and teeth (the _brain_ ), and will never ever stop.

"Ever."

A mere whisper, the final blow. A scream louder than anything else. 

Steve moves before he thinks. And a finger traces along a cancer-ridden vein, against skin ready to shatter like glass.

If only heartbeats could heal.

But Tony pushes the hand away abruptly: he does not want his fragility so exposed, he does not need it beared. 

Steve wishes he could speak; he doesn't even want to. The loss fills their noses and mouths with cotton.

It's Tony who moves first, who needs the searing burn to heal, who maybe _does_  need to be exposed and beared, for once, completely.

He grabs Steve's hand with delicacy only dying men can know, and shares a secret deep within him, buried in blue light.

Steve's outstretched palm against the reactor.

A promise of remembrance spelled out in the whizzing and ticking of clockwork gears.

*

The coughing screams through a battered chest.

Tony muffles it in his hands, in a towel, in the night that ensures Steve's sleeping, for once, a quaint smile on his lips Stark hopes will never disappear. 

But he's doubled over the sink, eyes watering as lungs try to remove whatever cannot be fought, obstruction eternal.

He coughs, and coughs, and coughs, drool dripping down his chin.

And then he dares himself to look as the water flows down the drain.

" _Fuck_." is all he hisses, defeat once again.

Water stained with blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, sorry this comes so late - I've been caught up in Back To School shenanigans and really fun rp shenanigans which also manage to suck out all of my creative energy ever at all. But fear not! this story shall continue.


	20. Last Flight

Warmth of skin that counteracts the pain of migraines sitting still behind worn eyes.

Tony feels his scorching feverish back against Steve’s cooler skin, the quiet touch of cold fingertips against a roaring forehead.

From the center, down to the temple, along the cheek, up to the jaw. And repeat.

A delicate dance between cells, fingertips and flaking skin, a bump in the road where a worn-down cheekbone lies, a tiny curve where the skin is pulled across the skull. A symphony of yellows and pinks; the delicate etehereal blue of bags under eyes, how the red from the veins in exhausted scleras dips into even more tired skin. A crinkled smile where the joy should be. A tainted purple where lip splits in two, cracked skin.

The Requiem commences, like every other day.

Steve wraps an arm around Tony’s chest and nearly loses his grip on the hipbones and scars, nearly loses himself in the way a rib rams into another, xylophone of calcium and lies.

Breath counts every pore on Stark’s neck and every inch of skin, a chasm neverending connecting blood vessels to flesh to cartilage, where the last vertebrae is and where the shoulders begin, and Steve could mimic the very way light traces its contours with eyes closed an an open heart, make charcoal bleed into his hands, under fingernails, dark little whispers of promises alight.

A single arch drawn on heavy paper and painted with emptiness and love.

The curve of a back, the jab of a shoulderblade, the throb of a vein right on the hip, a throb of heart right in the middle of a sighing chest. Blue light.

Tony’s bones feel lightweight, empty, dust.

He basks in the only message his nerve endings give him that  _matters_ , because everything apart from Steve's fingers brushing against him is just background noise, the quiet pain he hates so much is just obnoxious chatter in his ears he could care less for. The sweat that makes his mouth taste of death is just the low buzzing of a broken coffee maker. The tiredness is just the cacophony of teenagers giggling in the streets he prefers to ignore. The nausea is the sound a car's shift makes when it breaks, the rasp of doom. The fevers are just his father mumbling into his morning paper. The rustling of leaves is as loud as the rustling of sheets, the breeze tinkering with windows is a siren's song.

And Steve's voice?

Steve's voice is the sound a heart makes when breaking, and is found again.

*

"You know-" Tony mumbles as he pulls his head up from the table, an untouched coffee mug sitting not too far from his nose.

"I know?"

"I've been dreaming a lot these days."

"Really?"

(Tony Stark never dreams.)

"Yeah. Of flying, mostly."

Steve sets down the spoon in the sink and doesn't glance over at his friend. He stares at the faucet instead, shiny metal. At the fridge, the dishes that still need cleaning. At the trashcan. At anything.

Anything but him.

"Flying?"

"Like with the suit. And. And stuff."

Tongue thick with painkillers feeds an even slower mind. But his thoughts are sharp for once: their jab is cold and unmerciful.

“It would be. Nice. You know.”

Steve can feel Tony's eyes on his back. He will dread the question that's about to follow.

“Maybe just one last time?”

Mug slammed down into the sink with a little more violence than intended. It splits but does not break.

“Out of the question. Too dangerous.”

“ _Right_. I forgot. That. That the ultimate voice of reason was doubling as a Super Nurse."

Even his sarcasm is tinted with exhaustion.

“Have you  _looked_  at yourself, Tony?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“I see a man too sick to even get out of bed.”

“I'm in the kitchen.”

“ _That's not the point_.”

The creak of a chair being moved, a stumbling man standing.

“Wanna know what  _I see_ , Liberty Bell?”

Steve turns to face him just because he fears he'll fall.

“I see a man. A man who's  _dying_. I'm dying, am I right? There's no doubt. And I want. I want to do  _one. Last. Goddamn thing._ ”

A moment of quiet.

“I want to fly.”

Rogers shakes his head. The argument ends there, for now.

Tony doubles over coughing (most of the coffee ends up on the floor).

*

"...Just for ten minutes."

Steve sighs and stands up from the couch and runs his hands through his hair. Tony immediately regrets speaking as he watches him move in the reading light's dim glow, the book he was paging through now abandoned on the floor.

"You can't operate the suit."

"JARVIS will have it all under control."

" _No_ , Tony."

" _Please_."

Steve glares at him through his fingers.

"Besides, Malibu's too far."

"I have a  _private jet_  that's been sitting in JFK ever since I stumbled through your door."

"Tony."

Steve marches up to Stark.

"I. Don't. Want. You. Using. The. Suit."

" _Why_?"

"You already know why."

It's in the way he can no longer really walk on his own. It's in the way he can't really swallow anymore, how he can't really eat unless he's helped. How he sometimes seems to forget things, names places and people. How his eyes go glassy. How he vomits nearly all of his meals up.

How it's the million little puzzle pieces shattering.

"Steve. Steve, I need this.  _I need this_."

A last love letter to his life. A last promise to his loved ones, a last dance with his metal mistress, wrapped in her arms, her gentle kiss of electricity and working gears. The slight sigh of her repulsor lights, the delicate blush of a heart of toxic metal: he needs this one last time.

The screech of sunlight against reds and golds. 

He needs this to survive what little longer he has left.

" _I beg of you_."

Tony grabs onto Steve's arm and squeezes, tugs ever so slightly. His eyes shine with urgency and pain. The idea has made its room inside his head and won't let go. It gnaws and nags and bites and burrows deep inside.

It has become his newest addiction, his newest need he needs to quench. To fly and lose himself while doing so.

" _...please_?"

Steve sighs and runs a single thumb against Steve's cheek.

"I can't-"

"Ten minutes. Ten minutes is all I ask."

Once again, he chases the dream and memory. Once again, it slips just beyond his grasp. Once again, he begs Steve to let him be free.

And Steve sighs, once more (he's lost count of the breaths by now) and knows he'll say yes. Because he cannot possibly refuse.

Not to eyes as sad as those.

*

"Thank you."

"You've said it for the millionth time. I might change my mind if you don't shush."

" _Steve_ \--"

"Shut up."

They slink out of the car and Tony ignores Happy's worried gaze sticking to the ribs that show under his shirt and the fact that he's leaning on Steve to walk. Rogers thanks the driver with a quick anxious nod. He knows he won't go away until they come out, sitting in the dark with his headlights on. And it's already a proof of his loyalty when he came to pick them up at the airport at half past midnight, Starbucks coffee in hand, a yawn kept at bay.

There's another car in the parking lot. Tony feels himself furrow his brow and for a second his mind slips off of its hinges (and his head spins incontrollably, legs of lead, the rest seems to float away seamlessly). 

He realizes this happens only when he feels Rogers' hand on his hip. When he needs to lean on him even more (and who cares if anyone sees), take a break although he hasn't even walked twenty feet.

"Yeah. Fuck."

Steve's already regretting this, and it's far too late.

"It's okay. One step at a time."

They reach the door slowly but surely, and it's open. 

Worry.

The lights are on, the door's been opened. Footsteps.

High heels.

Steve sees Tony go pale.

"Welcome back, Sir."

"JARVIS. Fuck. Hey. Hi. Hi there."

Eyes wide as he swallows. He knows who's in the house, he recognized Rhodey's car in the driveway.

"...is. Is  _she_  here?"

"Yes."

The accent isn't British and the voice isn't male. 

Pepper's standing in the living room, next to the piano, a pile of clothes tight in her arms. It's her clothes.

Her belly curves.

Tony wishes he could place a hand against it and his mind goes blank. Maybe the kid's even started moving.

"Pepper." he says quietly and averts her gaze that looks absolutely  _terrified_  of having to be faced with such a walking cadaver.

"Tony." she says back, an automatism.

Steve suddenly feels as if he is too much, but Tony tightens his grasp on his arm, nails digging in deep.

"Why are you here, Pepper?"

"I. I came to get some clothes."

"Ya dating Rhodey now?"

He doesn't mean to say it. Doesn't mean to sound so aggressive.

But she's beautiful and perfect and alive. He's horrible and dying, dying, dead.

"No. No."

She blinks.

" _Happy_."

And looks at the floor.

"Oh. Well."

The same tone of defeat from the evening she left him.

"Okay."

'Why are  _you_  here, Tony?"

Stark grins.

"I'm gonna fly."

Rogers sees Pepper's eyes widen as she glances at him, then back at Stark, then at him again. Her thought process is clear as day:

( _too thin_ )

( _too sick_ )

( _he'll kill himself_ ). _  
_

Her eyes betray rage, too.

But really? What can she say? She can say nothing. This is Tony's decision. He's stubborn, he's self centered, he's arrogant. He's an addict. He's not going to stop.

No one will be able to stop him anyway. So she keeps quiet.

"Fuck." 

She whispers it, under her breath.

" _Fuck_ , Tony."

And no one can hear.

*

The metal clasps around him and it feels  _loose_. 

( _too thin_ ) _  
_

( _too sick_ )

( _he'll kill himself_ )

The mask falls into place. The motors whizz.

"You ready, Tony?"

Steve slaps him on the back and smiles to hide his worry. Pepper stands behind him, lips tight, arms crossed. 

She makes no effort to hide her discomfort.

"Engines are online, Sir."

And for one of the rarest of times, Tony can breathe. He breathes, within his shell. He breathes, within the metal, within the work he's put into it, within what it means to him.

He breathes as power reaches every scrap of alloy, as blood reaches every single cell.

He breathes.

"You sure, JARVIS?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, then. Let's get this baby online."

The rockets in his feet hit full boost and he's suddenly up as Steve hops back, cursing in between his teeth.

Pepper swallows and shakes her head.

But he's flying. Tony spreads wings made of metal, and he's flying. 

Air gushing around him as the darkness envelopes him, as he teaches himself once more how to fly (but the notion's never truly left his brain), as he opens his arms and screams.

Spinning, whizzing, higher, higher, faster.

High.

A cacophony of endorphines and adrenaline. He doesn't want to stop.

He can't, the addict never will.

This is his last flight. This will be just like his first.

"...Sir?"

"Shut up, JARVIS."

"Sir, you are reaching maximum altitude."

"I  _know_ , JARVIS."

"In your present health condition, I advise you slow down immediately."

He says nothing. He keeps on climbing. He shuts the nagging in his brain off.

He listens to the wind tearing at his bones. 

Which is when one of the propellers stops working.

*

Steve sees him stop, suddenly, in mid air, a rocket spluttering and dying.

The sweat already freezing the back of his neck suddenly ices over. He knows Pepper's seen it to. Lips slightly parted, a hand that soon flies up to press against her mouth. 

"Oh. Oh,  _no_."

She grabs his arm.

He wants to vomit.

*

He notices it dies.

He feels his stomach drop. He feels his mind drop, drop down in the blisfullness that is a panic attack, the murkiness of feeling  _trapped_  forever, never being able to get out. 

His mind drops. His body starts dropping too.

"Well, fuck. JARVIS?"

"Yes, sir?"

He is resolute. And he has no will to fix this. None at all.

Deep down, he feels it's what he wants. What he needs.

"You were a good friend."

*

The drop only lasts a few seconds. 

He wasn't even too high, and maybe it might bruise him but there's no real definite crash and maybe he won't even _die_ , right?

The drop only lasts a few seconds that actually last a lifetime and a century and a millennia. And a heartbeat. And a muffled scream. And everything.

And nothing, always. Forever, eternity unleashed.

Pepper and Steve can do nothing but stare as Tony crashes into the rooftop. It breaks under the impact, Tony staggers through floors, lands in the lab. Pepper can't even scream, or say anything. They rush into the house, down the stairs, mouths tasting bitter and horrible and everything feels _unreal_ , and all that Steve can do is beg he isn't dead.

They find him amidst shattered cars and twisted metal parts, but the reactor's light's still shining, still, but nearly not breathing. Blue flickers.

Steve thinks he might cry, he pries Tony's mask off ( _new york new york new york_ ), and his lips hover over his, _for a second_ , they search for breath and life, and not just a coma. And they long to press against his, but Pepper's there, and he's not ready. He knows he never will be.

"Jesus. Jesus fuck you _piece of shit don't you. Dare. Die on me don't you dare_."

Is it his voice? He can't even recognize the snarl that's left his gritting teeth as a fist and then another slams against Tony's chest. Once and twice, repeat.

"Don't you fucking _dare_  leave me."

" _Us_." Pepper whispers as she keeps to the side and feels the terror cease swirling and settle into calm she knows is numbness.

"Don't you-"

Tony's breath explodes in a ragged gasp and the sound of oxygen being violently sucked in. Eyes open, wide. Wide. Terrified. Lonely. Steve pulls back and stares at him, his hands are shaking but he doesn't even notice.

And Tony breathes, breathes, breathes. Hard gulps of air. He glares over at Steve whose fear has turned into rage in the meantime. Brow furrowed.

Rage towards Tony.

Rage towards himself.

Stark opens his mouth to speak and finds he is in too much pain to do so. Steve sees this. He helps him stand, helps him crawl out of the metal suit. Iron Man becomes Tony Stark once more.

All of this is done in perfect silence, no eyes meet. No one dares speak.

They're still too shaken.

Pepper and Rogers start to make their way up the stairs, when Steve stops and turns around.

Tony isn't coming. He's sitting at his workbench, and he's staring into space. Blank. 

" _You wanted to kill yourself, didn't you?_ "

Stark doesn't answer.

Steve doesn't expect him to.

*

Pepper's sitting at the island counter top in the kitchen. She's clutching a glass of water and longs for something stronger she knows she can't have.

Steve's leaning against the wall.

They feel incredibly and horribly empty.

Pepper sighs, and nearly starts speaking. But her mouth closes again. She nibbles at her lip and glances down and glances back up at Rogers who hasn't moved an inch.

"Is. Is he. You know."

Steve's blue eyes snap up when he hears her voice, strained by the effort of holding back tears.

"Is he?"

"... _dying_?"

Rogers just stares at her.

"You mean you didn't know?"

She shakes her head.

"I mean. I thought. I had my suspicions. I just thought he was...an _addict_. Or something."

"No. He's. I mean,

( _he's still an addict_ )

he's sick."

" _Dying_  sick?"

He doesn't answer.

" _Steve_."

"Yes. Pepper."

She nods. Curtly. And doesn't say anything, her grip around her own hip tightens.

"Dying sick."

Her eyes are welling up again. She misses Stark, misses his voice and his laugh and the way he made her feel. Although she knows Happy will be a much better father. Although Happy loves her and she loves him, she _misses_  her inventor.

But Tony loves someone else. Or, better still, is loved by someone.

"You know. I. I should probably get going. It's late."

She can't handle a second with Steve for another moment. In the way he gasped and cursed and how their lips nearly met, how he helped him, gingerly, how he was there. How he was crying.

She stands quickly and sets the glass down. She grabs what's left of her clothes, her handbag, a finger brushing against a piano she knows she's seeing for the last time.

Tears choke her again. Life chokes her.

She's pregnant with a dying man's child. 

"Pep?"

She's nearly reached the door when a voice makes her turn.

Steve's standing and the kitchen's lights behind him cast the man in darkness.

"Steve?"

"Could you please tell Happy we'll be spending the night here?"

She smiles at him for the first time. His voice is too sad to ignore.

"Of course I will."

Steve doesn't thank her.

He knows him taking care of Stark is more than enough, in Pott's eyes.

*

"Are you planning on coming to bed?"

Steve's voice is hard although he doesn't want it to be.

Tony's moved from the workbench to the floor, apparently, curled up under one of the tables.

Steve is on the brink of punching him.

"I don't feel like it."

Tony feels beyond guilty, beyond sad, beyond scared. He is empty, he is dying. He is sick of _everything_. All he wants to do is sleep and graciously wait for his body to die.

That's everything he could ever ask for. And not having it makes him want to scream.

Steve doesn't say anything for a few seconds and then stands back up from where he was crouching.

From inside his hole, Stark can hear the sound of something being thrown against the wall in sheer frustration.

" _Fine, Tony._ " 

The whizzing of doors opening, the bleep of a correct security code opening them.

"Don't bother coming upstairs, I'll be sleeping on the couch anyway."

Tony swallows, squeezes his eyes shut as Rogers climbs back up the stairs.

_I love you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would Tony surviving the fall be even physically possible?  
> This is fanfiction! If two heterosexual comic book and movie characters can fall in love, then ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.  
> And that is your scientifically backed up answer. Just for you.


	21. My Crown Of Thorns

Eyes that burn and swim inside your skull.

Steve blinks without having slept a wink and tosses and turns, stands up from Tony's couch and paces up and down and stops to stare at the night outside the window, the solitude of death so evident in the bluish glow of their silence and the streetlights unreachable.

A suicide cut short, once again a fleeting kiss that never was – he wishes Pepper didn't know nor pretend she was oblivious. He wishes, for a second, for her to tear the fragile walls of what he and Tony have to pieces and expose them raw and bloodied. And maybe only that way will he find his quiet.

He wishes he didn't have to watch him die.

Steve wishes he could sleep. But worry gnaws, and gnaws, and chews. It bites in deep. It makes his brain bleed into his dreams, stain them into nightmares.

Steve presses the palms of his hands to his eyes until he sees red, deep, dark, crimson red. A sting of migraine.

“... _Steve_?”

His head flips up, then, blue eyes meet even more exhausted browns.

Tony doesn't look happy.

Steve regrets noticing this. It digs a deep hole in the middle of his chest.

“Tony. Hey.”

Calm, collected, distant, cold. Aching, dying, wishing he could scream.

He nearly saw Tony die in front of him, and he's finally realized that no, he cannot handle this. He cannot do this, he cannot escort Tony to his early grave, he cannot bury him, and he never will be able to. And death can be cruel, but, God, fate is crueler, and deeper, and a double edged blade and a wound that cannot be dressed. Scars that will never heal.

_Because he loves him_.

He loves him so much it is fire in his veins and ice on his skin, breath taken away by the other's rarest smiles, the quietness of days spent counting blinks and seconds dwindling.

And he cannot bury him. He cannot be the keeper of Stark's last breath – he doesn't have it in him, he cannot have it in him.

But he will stay, and they both know this.

Steve will _stay_ although he cannot handle it, for he knows he has to. Tony is him and he is Tony, simply, an extension of each other's lives through each other's illness and loneliness.

“I'm sorry.”

In the early morning quiet, Tony whispers this and doesn't even dare look Rogers in the eye. The cracking low exhausted voice proves to him he's honest – but even without, Steve would've known.

“It's fine-”

“And the answer is yes.”

It takes Steve's brain a few seconds to realize what Tony means. And when he does, he sighs and runs a hand through his hair and looks at the ground and is torn between punching Stark or holding him until life stops spinning out of control around them.

“But I love you. Pepper loves y--”

“I know.”

“Then _why_?”

“Why are you here, Steve?”

An honest question Rogers cannot bring himself to answer.

“...So?”

“I-- _Because I love you_.”

Tony then comes up to the Captain, slips a finger under his chin. Lips brushing against lips, the kiss they were meant to have back in the lab but missed, Pepper hovering.

Three words never said whispered in a single second, an exchange of breaths.

They don't need anything else.

Not for now.

Steve wishes his knees would give out. They never will.

*

Days spent with a dying man are, in order (but not quite):

  * tiny mysteries and even emptier rooms,

  * books unread,

  * movies never finished,

  * sadnesses looming.




Days spent with a dying man are pictures that will never be snapped. They are foods that will never be eaten, lives that will never be lived.

Dying men are promises broken too soon and they are trees which no longer grow.

But days spent with dying men are also, in order (but not quite):

  * the joy of a bird sitting on a windowsill,

  * the sacrality of a movie watched for the last time,

  * the comfort of a warm cup of tea (although it's much too hot outside),

  * the beauty of hearts nearly beating in unison.




Can one learn this in a day?

Steve decides he can. Because, truly, it is simple. It is simple and inexplicable and real: how Tony walks ever so slowly, ever so patiently, how every detail in such a spacious home is his and his alone (and maybe Rogers', too), how he is heavy in the flesh that cannot wait to peel off, how he is both there and not there.

And how all of this is terrifying and unbearable.

How all of this is painful, and scary, and necessary.

How neither of them would want this any different.

*

Two days spent in Malibu are an acceptable compromise, Steve and Tony decide.

Mainly Steve, for Tony wishes he could rush back home in a heartbeat - because the house is too tight and too big and too _his_ (and still smells of her and he thought he wouldn't notice but he _does_ ) and too much.

But Rogers thinks it's good to get away, and how can Stark ever contradict that hopeful smile?

( _can't you see? it's just cracking at the sides_ )

*

“So I had an idea.”

Day two. Ten AM in the morning.

Tony's been limping ever since the fall. Steve has attempted to address the issue and been blatantly ignored.

Tony's cough has worsened.

Rogers sets down his coffee mug on the counter and furrows his brow.

“Shoot.” he says and regrets it a millisecond after.

“Remember that talk we had about Peggy?”

Hands running through hair, memories chasing.

“Yeah?”

“I did some research. She's still in the United States.”

Rogers is sure he's choked on his own spit (or was it coffee?). Either way, he's wheezing into his hands.

“In a retirement home. In LA.”

“No.”

“You didn't even hear what-”

“No. The answer is no. Whatever it is. Just. No.”

Tony clasps his hands together and sighs.

“I'm trying to help. _For once_.”

“ _Don't_.”

Wrong move. Tony recoils.

“I'm sorry.” is automatic. He's said it far too many times in far too many occasions: and Steve's started to hate those words.

“No. No, it's okay. I understand.”

Words as stale as their strained feelings: sometimes others scare us too much to actually do something useful.

Stark leans his forehead against the table, then; Steve wishes he could take the last few minutes all back.

“You know, if-”

“No, I _understand_. It was stupid on my part.”

“It wasn't, Stark.”

The sick man looks up at the soldier and gives him one of his sad and weak smiles.

It was, and they both know it. Oh, how utterly empty those eyes are. The smile rattles with nothingness, and Steve is suddenly determined to fix things and if he gets hurt, so be it.

“Where exactly is this?”

“No, no. It's okay, Steve, really, if-”

“I might be interested. I told you it doesn't matter.”  
“Some overpriced retirement castle. I wrote it down, somewhere.”

Steve listens and pretends he cares and stares at the wall right behind Tony's left ear. He feels empty, of course he does. It's imaginable that he does.

She loved him. He loved her. He died. He came back.

She was gone.

But he can't deny that there's a quiver somewhere in his stomach.

Fear, maybe.

Although it could easily be mistaken for curiosity.

*

Thin and tiny and wearing a suit that's far too large on him, sunken cheeks. And _yet_ , he's wearing sunglasses.

Tony looks ridiculous and Steve doesn't have it in him to say anything, as they sit in comfortable red armchairs in the waiting room of a retirement home that looks more like a five star hotel than anything else.

“Don't you think people will talk?” Steve asks in a last ditch attempt to backpedal, run away, save himself from the dread he thought was something different. Distract Tony.

He _doesn't_ want to meet Peggy and he has no idea _why_ he's here and why he said yes and why he thought he was _curious_ , as if her aging was some sort of circus act.

“About what?” Tony replies, not tearing his eyes away from the sports magazine he's dove into.

“You.”

“I'm so far off I couldn't care less.”

He is direct, blunt, and unintentionally cruel.

Steve's about to snap back when a tiny nurse dressed in white skips up to them, talks in hushed tones, nervousness hardly masked.

“You're here to see Peggy, aren't you?”

Rogers is pretty sure he's lost all knowledge of speaking, because as he attempts to muster a word past his lips, he realizes he cannot do it, at all, ever.

So he breathes a relieved sigh when Stark steps in, surprisingly vital, and answers with a cordial 'yes'.

“Cousins. She's an...an old aunt.”

Rogers glares at him as he lies. Stark shrugs. The nurse seems oblivious.

“Very well. Right this way.”

Steve stands up and follows, catches a glimpse of Tony staggering to his feet and dragging himself along.

He might be on the brink of vomiting: he's not so sure yet.

*

The room they step in is spacious and comfortable and calming, a widescreen TV stuffed to the side, a group of aging men and women crowded around it.

Steve stops in his tracks as the nurse goes over to a tiny little woman, white hair and bright black eyes, and it's _her_ , isn't it?

And he'd recognize Peggy Carter no matter what.

She squints as the woman talks and gestures towards both Steve and Tony, Stark suddenly cowering in the shadows.

“I'll leave you with her, big boy.”

Steve doesn't know if he _wants_ to be left alone.

_Why did he agree on this. Why did he say yes_.

_Why_.

But he breathes and steps forward and maybe he _does_ need this, maybe he does need this to let go of it all properly and for good. To bid them all farewell, Bucky and Peggy and Howard.

But his courage lasts only for a second.

And he's crumbling again.

Peggy carter is miniscule. Skin tight over her bones, wrinkle chasing after wrinkle in a map of rivers made of memories and mountains made of regrets but also summer mornings, white hair and few teeth.

Shaking hands.

“Evening.” Steve awkwardly spats out.

He can talk.

What a surprise.

Carter squints her eyes and furrows her brow.

“Do I know you, young man?”

For a moment, Steve _hopes_. He hopes old age hasn't destroyed it all. He hopes she can tell.

And he even tricks himself into seeing some sort of remembrance in tired worn eyes.

But it is an illusion: smoke and shattered mirrors, it dissolves like water and ice in the sun.

“Peg. Peggy.”

Deep breath.

“It's me. It's Steve.”

But her eyes are glazed over, and it hits Steve with the force of an avalanche.

“Steve?”

She is swimming in empty. In the lack of memories. In a sea gone dry.

“I don't know anyone named Steve.”

Behind him, Rogers hears a muffled curse and knows Tony's heard every word and realized to what extent he's messed up this time. He glances behind his shoulder, and Stark's nowhere to be seen. Rushed out, ran out, propelled by guilt and fear.

The same that holds Rogers by the throat right now. But, really, he is the one to blame in thinking she could've ever remembered.

“But you _do_ look awful familiar. Are you somebody's son?”

Oh, how Steve wishes he could cry.

“I'm. Yeah. The son of a friend.”

Lying seems so easy.

They're quiet for a few seconds. Peggy's lip trembles, so does her hand. A single shaking finger rushes up to her temple and taps against it.

“It's. It's all in here, you know. Every name and face. I just wish I could remember.”

She seems sad, suddenly. Eternally, utterly, completely sad.

She has no idea of who he is.

And trusting secrets to a stranger is easier than one thinks.

“There was a boy, I think, who looked like you. But he couldn't be your father, of this I am positive: he died, the poor thing.”

Steve needs to sit down and his knees give right after he's grabbed a chair. Sweat sticks to his skin and shirt.

He never asked for this. Damn-

_Damn Tony_.

“But he was such a pretty boy, and I was _so in love_. Bright blue eyes, just like yours.”

Steve's mind has gone completely blank. All that matters, all that _can_ matter, is her voice. Is what little remains of Peggy Carter.

“He died, though, as I said. During the war.”

A bitter smile, crinkly eyes.

“All the best boys did.”

Steve doesn't smile back.

“And there was another. Another thing...yes. A dance, I think.”

His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and he hopes his hands aren't shaking although it feels like they are, because he could've been able to stand it all, every single thing, every puzzle piece and missing memory, but not the _dance_. Not that.

Not the one thing they never had.

“He promised he'd take me out to dance.”

Her eyes are glowing, gleaming, trapped in a time that is no longer hers.

“A dance, yes. With red dresses and brass instruments. And the poor boy didn't know _how_ , you see. So I'd sworn I'd teach him.”

Steve figures there's one thing he can do, at least. It might destroy him, but it might also make up for the times that have been burned and frozen in ice, the life that should have been.

He thinks about this as Peggy quietly hums to herself, eyes closed, fingers tracing memories in mid air.

“A dance, ma'am?”

“Oh, please _do_ call me miss. You make me feel old.”

Her smile widens and this time Rogers can't help but smile back.

“But yes.”

“Would you.”

He cracks his knuckles.

“Would you like to try?”

“And dance?”

“If you can, of course.”

Peggy slips her hand into the man's, and maybe she _does_ know, after all. Maybe just a little.

And despite arthritis and osteoporosis, despite old age and missed chances, she steps right up, a hip creaking uncomfortably.

“Why, I'd be _delighted_.”

*

He leans against the bathroom stall door and wishes he could stop the oncoming sob. It's tearless, at least, but hurts his chest nonetheless.

Steve grips his hair and tugs at it, listens to the quiet crushing his ears for the longest of times.

He does not want to be found.

He does not need to be found.

The sound of a door opening, then, the slowest of footsteps.

“Steve?”

Quiet.

He is mad at Tony, and at himself. He can't tell who he hates more, at the moment, wether Stark for dragging him along, or himself for agreeing after all.

“ _Steven_?”

Footsteps, he knows Stark's peering under the doors to see where he is. He considers crouching on the toilet, decides against it.

A soft knock.

“Wanna let me in?”

Steve wishes he'd shut up, for once, because she remembers nothing and the last thing he had left of the life before is _gone_ , is nothing but a shell.

“Okay.”

Stark sighs.

“I fucked up.”

_No shit_.

“I fucked up big. And I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_ , Steve, I really am. I didn't stop to think and I thought I was gonna be doing something decent for once and-”

“ _Don't die_.”

Steve blurts it out, suddenly.

Stark stops for a second, seems to think.

“What?”

“Don't _die_ , Tony. Don't leave me too.”

_Don't do this to me_.

Tony presses a hand to his mouth, chokes back the emotion and guilt.

“Oh. Oh, _Steve_.”

The sound of someone sliding to the floor.

“My beautiful, wonderful Steve.”

A hand pops up from under the door, then, a hand that's sick and torn. Steve stares at it for a few seconds, before crawling to the floor too, and squeezing it. Cheek pressing against plastic grey doors.

“Don't _die_.”

If only words could save.

(But heartbeats are worth a thousand of them. If not more.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm well aware that by now we all know Peggy is actually back in the UK (thanks, The Avengers deleted scenes!) but bear with me, guys.   
> x


	22. Home (The Second And Third Promise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to all and any of those who are still reading this: thank you so much. i'm sorry i've been so absent, depression got the best of me.

But it’s his head, isn’t it? Sweaty palms bleak eyes tired skin, it’s his head that’s fucked more than the rest, it’s his lungs, it’s his chest, it’s his bloodstream.

Tony squeezes bloodshot eyes so tight his forehead hurts, and then some, and grits his teeth as his toes curl, he curses once and twice and a thousand times: tissue pressed to his nose, soaked in blood. He throws yet another useless one away.

Rinse and repeat.

The nosebleed makes him want to drown himself in the bathtub.

There’s hands resting on his back and arms circling, suddenly, the feeling of Steve’s bare chest against a sweat-drenched shirt, and Steve Rogers pulls him close, tiny, pulls him close and cradles him. Tony grabs onto his arm with his free hand, lets the other one drop and tastes the blood seep through his lips, into his teeth, tongue wet and rusty. For a second he drowns himself in feeling, allows himself to indulge in his heart beating a little too fast, and then Steve presses his lips to the top of his head and runs his hands through, and smiles against, thinning black hair, and can’t tell whether he’s just sad or bitter, too. Maybe it’s both.

“It’s okay.” he whispers, even before the other can mutter a single word, and then crouches down in front of him, wipes the red with a new tissue, delicately, cupping Tony’s face with his hand, running his thumb against stubble. Tony doesn’t smile, stares for a moment somewhere to the right of Rogers’ shoulder and he tries, for a second, to claw himself out of the throbbing in his brain before realizing it’s useless, and worthless, and sad. So. Very. Fucking. Sad. He sighs.

Steve sighs with him.

Murky black meets worried blue, then, and that’s the one thing Steve can never manage to hide: how worried he always is. And it makes Tony uneasy, most of the times. It makes him scared and sick and small.

But he smiles at Rogers nonetheless: an excuse of a smile, but it’s better than nothing. It’s better than dying, for one thing, and it’s better than frowning and it’s better than hurting others and it’s much, much better than a lot of things, like vomiting at two AM and crying because the pain is far too much to bear anymore, curled up in bed trembling, and he knows he needs morphine, something _stronger_ , morphine or heroin or death.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, then, and rests his forehead against Steve's.

"No, it's okay."

"It's  _not_."

But Steve's lips press, quietly, to Tony's, and then he's saying "It's okay, it's okay" over and over, inbetween butterfly kisses, a two word lie repeated ad nauseam because it's something they are both so sick of it's their only hope.

"It's  _okay_ ," and then Stark grabs his face and they're _kissing_ , although he can't even seem to catch his breath anymore, but still his tongue slips past Rogers' lips and his fingers grasp, desperately, the back of Steve's neck, tug at blond hair.

It doesn't matter that Tony tastes bitter. It doesn't matter that he tastes of vomit and of ketosis. Steve just shuts his eyes and smiles, lost, but then Tony shifts his weight.

And then they're on the floor. And Tony rests his forehead against Steve's, again, brow furrowed and teeth clenching, arms shaking with the sheer force of having to hold himself up. Steve notices this.

"Come here."

Arms wrapping around twigs that were once bones, and then Tony's pressed tight against him. Steve can feel their hearts, racing after eachother and tripping and falling and Tony is breathing against his neck and they just  _lie_  there, and Rogers shuts his eyes, a hand running through his lover's thinning black hair. Tony falls into the feeling of their bodies touching, Tony slipping away into Steve's breathing, into strong arms that seem to hold his flesh to his bones, they seem to hold muscle in place.

And that's when he starts to cry, muffled against the other's shirt, sobs that nearly split him in two, and he's nothing but a scared child. But Tony cries, and cries, and cries, despite the bruises and the battered soul and the hollow veins.

He cries, both eight year old and ancient, ancient man, lost soul and dying one.

" _Don't let me go_."

Steve never will.

They lie there for what feels like hours, for what is unmistakeably a long, long time.

*

Steve wakes up on the floor and there's cold where Tony fell asleep against him, and there's the sound of coughing and retching muffled behind a door.

Tony's shut himself himself in the kitchen and his metal chest rattles against his black lungs, the clockwork stops ticking for a second (he doesn't notice) and there's the inaudible scream of breaking machines. He breaks as he presses a hand to his mouth, over and over with fits of coughing, and he breaks as it hurts, he breaks as it bleeds through his fingers. He breaks through his ashy teeth, and on his throbbing tongue, and he breaks, he breaks, he  _breaks_. 

Steve rests a hand against the door and listens for a moment, before letting himself in.

"You. _Hey_."

Tony freezes, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Hey," he says, and lowers his eyes, and doesn't want to think.

Steve wipes a speck of red from cracked lips, Tony pulls back, and then his mind hits a standstill, once again, as he feels the breath get caught in his trachea again, a new coughing fit kicking and screaming its way past his lips. He doubles over, Steve catches him in time, forehead resting against his shoulder, before he lets him sit down, grabs a glass of water.

"Here," as he helps Stark drink and Stark closes his eyes and Stark smirks to himself, and hates everything he's become and wanted to be and then he looks at Steve, and knows he loves him.

But he feels so empty, these days. He feels so lost, so little, so fragile, fingers grasping things that aren't really there, fingers catching things and dropping them.

But Steve is always there, always, always, _always_ , always smiling, forever, warm lips that taste of what home could be, maybe. If Tony allows himself in one last time. 

And this is the only certain thing he has and knows.

*

He vomits most of lunch on the kitchen floor and curses between his teeth, and out comes the string of "I'm sorry"s again, words that seem to have comfortably taken up residence on the tip of his tongue and have no intention to leave. 

Steve hushes him once he's done cleaning, a finger pressed to chapped lips, a kind, hope-filled smile, before he sits back down across from Tony, and as he fans through the Sunday paper he can feel the other stare at him, and senses that he's about to speak.

Breath.

"When I-"

Pause. Breath. Sigh.

"When I go."

Vomited out. Sudden.

Steve flinches and hopes it didn't show.

"Remember that promise you made to me? About my kid?"

"Yeah," and he doesn't look up from the tiny printed words, orderly lines that he doesn't give a fuck about: Tony's voice is too low, too difficult to bear right now. It's disappeared down with his stomach, bled out with his wits and his heart and his soul.

"Could you. Make me another one?"

Tentative. Pause. Breathe. Breathe, breathe. Catch your breath.

Both of you.

Steve nods. "Anything you want."

"Be _happy_. Once I'm gone. For me."

( _oh, no_ )

Rogers clutches the paper so hard he can feel it rip, and he swallows, and he doesn't want to. He shuts his eyes and wishes he could punch Stark and then immediately regrets it.

"I'll give you. Half a year. A year, all right? A whole year where you can mourn this poor fucking asshole and then I want. You. To be.  _Happy_."

" _Tony_ \--"

"No. I'm serious. I'm fucking serious. I don't want to go knowing it will wreck your life."

( _but it will and you know it_ )

Rogers folds the newspaper, and their eyes still haven't met, not once. 

"I can't-"

"You  _have to_.

( _please_ )

For  _me_.

( _because I'm dying because I'll be gone soon soon, soon, so fucking soon_ )

Do it for me. Promise me you'll be okay."

"I can't."

" _Just tell me you will_."

Their eyes meet and Tony falls into ice, Steve falls into darkness. He forces himself to nod, and it's the hardest thing he's ever done.

"And find someone. Find yourself another Tony or Peggy or whoever at all. Find someone, and be happy, and  _come out of this alive_. Can you promise me these two things?"

"I don't- and it's Steve's turn to stutter and breathe and trip on his words- I _don't exist without you."_

He realizes his throat is closed by tears a moment too late.

"You're my. Everything. The first good thing after Peggy. The arrogant bastard who drives me up the wall. My sick little inventor. My mad scientist, you're my  _everything_."

He snarls the last words without even wanting to.

"And if I could save you, if I could tear the monster out of your blood, I would. I would in a heartbeat. So don't ask me to be okay, because I  _won't_ be okay, and if you make me keep promises I know I'll break, I won't. Be able. To do this."

He stands up and grabs both of Tony's hands and presses them to his chest, and Stark feels the warmth, and the heart beating.

"You're all I have left and I'm going to lose you too and this is never going to be okay, so don't ask me to make it okay. Because I don't know  _how._ To make it. Okay. I DON'T KNOW  _HOW_."

Tony clutches his fist and clutches Steve's shirt and he doesn't look at his face.

"I'm so-"

" _Shut up_."

And Steve realizes, as he kisses Tony, that Tony smells of dust and books and old records. He smells of him.

He smells of home. 

 


End file.
